


Stealth Mode

by hummun323



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-07-18 23:24:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 42,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7335235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hummun323/pseuds/hummun323
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are a newcomer to New York City and you end up having a run in with a certain red bandana'd vigilante turtle. Self indulgent raph x reader fic. This will be only fluff and an asexual fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stealth part 1

The fortunate thing about New York City subways is that they weren’t as dirty or as graffiti covered as movies had led you to believe.

The unfortunate thing was, as someone who had never used train systems before, the system was still a bitch to comprehend.

Looking at your phone, you hurriedly jump off the train, going by the directions your phone had last given you before it lost service. You got off with dozens of other people, and all but you probably knew where they were going.

 _Probably know this system like the backs of their hands_ , you think bitterly to yourself. Your phone won’t connect to the map app you need, so you have to wait until you get upstairs and out of the stone surroundings. Once out in the open air, you try to step out of the way while your phone connects to a satellite, but somehow, these New Yorkers still manage to find you in their way and tell you in not so subtle ways, running into you and cursing at you. Even though you’ve already done your best to stay clear, you just glare back at them. Maybe you’re already turning into a native because they stop cursing at you and just move on.

 _That’s right, assholes. Fight me._ And you bury your face into your phone again, turning it this way and that like a compass to figure out your map before heading away from the subway entrance.

 

Meanwhile, above ground and above the heads of the meager masses, four brothers were out and about enjoying their night’s freedoms. Four brothers who were stuck inside during daylight and during the night they emerged to patrol the city for any crime like the self-appointed guardians they were.

Their biggest enemy had been the gang leader Shredder, but he hadn’t been heard from after the so-called alien invasion. Unrelated gang activity had spiked for a while, but lately the city had been, one dare not think it but, quiet.

So these four brothers-who were also mutants, ninjas, and turtles-kept one eye peeled for any suspicious activity, while also enjoying some exercise and fresh air as they parkoured from building to building with whoops of joy and laughter.

In the lead with two katanas strapped to his back was Leonardo. While he enjoyed his exercise, he kept his head on a 360 swivel for any signs of illegal activity or danger, as well as his brothers behind him. In Leo’s wake, with a pack that looks like a radio jammer and legs for miles is Donatello. On the periphery is Michelangelo, tearing up the sides of the rooftops on his propelled skateboard.

Trailing behind, farther back to keep an eye on Mikey and by far the biggest turtle is Raphael. He won’t show it, but his little brother’s antics on that death trap make his heart race faster than this run and he swears if his brother falls and dies, he is going to bring him back to life just to kick his ass again-

Raph isn’t sure exactly what draws his eyes down. Was it a flashing cellphone screen? Was it a noise? Did some inner voice just tell him, _quick look_? He’ll never know or remember.

The red turtle comes to a screeching halt, or as best as he can with his bulk, his heels digging into the loose rocks of the building he’s on. In a few short seconds, his brothers are lost from sight as he leans over the thick cement railing and watches what’s below him unfold like some terrible B-movie.

Some girl with her phone held up close to her face is being trailed by some creep.

 _Is this girl stupid?_ Raph thinks to himself. _Is she not from around here? What girl walks around New York City with their face attached to their phone after dark?_ Even Donnie keeps his on his arm and can tear himself away from his tech. At best, someone would be bumped around a crowd. At worst…well, it was happening right in front of his eyes.

The girl suddenly stops walking and looks left and right, as if she’s either finally realizing what she’s doing or she’s more lost than she thinks. The guy stops walking, too, quickly leaning against the building like he’s been there the whole time. The girl doesn’t even look behind her.

And then Raph watches with widening eyes as the situation actually gets worse.

The girl buries herself back into her phone _and deliberately walks down the dead end alley._

“Stupid girl,” Raph growls to himself. If he had hair, he’d be pulling it out of his skull right now. He clenches his fists, wishing for the weight of his sai right about now. They’re at his side, but they won’t help him. He can’t just throw them at the guy; sure it’d save the girl, but then he’d have an angry Leo-not to mention a dead body-to deal with.

Raph starts to panic. He’s no Prince Charming; he can’t just swing in there and rescue the damsel in distress. He is far from any girl’s dream guy. She’d probably just scream and run, yelling about mutated turtle freaks.

He desperately looks around for his brothers. Leo would know what to do, how to handle this situation better and probably with more stealth than what Raph is thinking of on loop. But his brothers haven’t noticed his missing presence yet and are long gone. That’s what he gets for being rear man.

Sure enough, the creep follows the girl into the alley. She continues to look oblivious to the fact that there is a giant fence in front of her and has started fiddling with her phone, like she’s sending a text or doing a Google search.

The stalker slowly reaches for the girl’s purse strap just as she’s finally tucking that damn device into a side pocket.

Raph can’t take the suspense anymore and launches himself over the roof to stop this from happening in any way he can.

Except Raph shouldn’t have jumped so soon; if he’d blinked, he’d have missed it. In the time it takes him to land and roll into a shadowy area, the girl has whipped her purse around to knock her stalker in the side of his greasy head. The purse goes flying away as simultaneously she lands a side kick straight into his ribs. Pitching forward, the guy gets a mouthful of her knee and goes flying backwards and she ends in a practiced fighting pose.

The stalker is knocked out cold.

If only Raph could have admired the action from above, instead of midair. He could have appreciated the unexpected take down with an expert eye. He still wanted to take in what she had just accomplished, but instead he had to stay back so he wouldn’t be seen.

So much for being Prince Charming…

 

“That’s _right,_ sucker! You thought I didn’t notice you following me, dumbass?” You taunt. “I got news for you, dude. I noticed you following me _two trains ago_! How do I know, you ask?”

 _She literally just asked an unconscious man what he asked_ , Raph thinks while trying not to laugh.

“Because I am so lost on those damn trains that no one else could be taking the same wrong trains as me _and_ walking the same direction!” You crow at the stalker.

“And honestly, _sir_ ,” Raph can tell from his vantage point that there is so much dripping sarcasm in that sir, the guy may need a mop later, “I’d rather take you out myself than let some poor other girl who _doesn’t_ know how to defend herself deal with you. Now why don’t you just take a load off while I call the cops to pick up your sorry ass.”

You reach for your purse under your arm, but remember you used it to take him out. Crap, where did you end up tossing it?

 

Raph knits his brows together, wondering why she doesn’t just walk away. He looks down at his feet.

Oh crap.

“Fuck this shit, I am from the West Coast, we don’t have any train or subway systems or anything. Just buses that arrive _maybe_ every half hour,” you talk to yourself as you look. “Fuck this train system, though. Red lines, yellow lines, green lines, wrong passes, gates beeping angrily at me…”

You hear a noise, like someone clearing their throat, which makes you whip around, thinking that you didn’t hit that creepy stalker hard enough in the head. But you’re only too happy to give him a repeat performance of his beating.

Wait…has someone else has been in this alley the whole time? Oh shit, did they hear you muttering about the trains?

“Uh…here,” they say, holding out your purse for you. You notice the arm is big and muscular and start to panic if you’ll have to take out someone much bigger than Stalker Dude.

As a girl, you’re a bit…okay a lot suspicious. You eye your purse in their hand and up to the figure that stays in the shadows a couple of times each before darting forward to grab your purse before they can grab you. You keep your eyes on them as they just as quickly withdraw their arm back into the shadows and don’t make another move.

Eyes narrowing suspiciously, you check the zippers on your purse. They don’t look like they were messed with. Just in case, you quickly unzip it and check your wallet. You don’t carry cash, but your debit card and driver’s license are still there.

“Oh…thanks,” you say, looking up at them.

Their weight seems to move, like they’re shrugging. “No, uh…no problem.”

With the worst timing ever, the first car you two have seen all night drives by and the headlights illuminate the whole alley.

And your eyes widen as you look up and up at the person…or thing that just handed you your purse.

You suddenly flash back to being a small child and watching Beauty and the Beast over and over and that scene where Belle finally sees the Beast for the first time, how he’s terrifying, tall, and has sharp pointy teeth flashes behind your eyes.

 _Except despite his appearance,_ a logical part of you rationalizes as you step back in fear, _remember he wasn’t evil?_

 _That’s true, you reply to yourself._ Whatever this is didn’t help me with the stalker, though.

_You took that creep out in three seconds. When would he have helped?_

_When he…handed me my purse back, with my cellphone,_ you realize.

 

Raph’s hands went up defensively when he saw you start to panic when you got that accidental look at him.

“No no no no no,” he starts to say. “Don’t freak out. I’m not gonna hurt you, I promise.”

But his argument dies at the ‘no’s’ when he sees the panic simply disappear from your eyes.

“Thanks,” you say again. “Um…do you have a name?”

“Uh…” Raph’s eyes dart around again. He won’t admit it, but when he starts to panic, he likes to look to what his brothers are doing. But they still aren’t around.

Of course, as he panics, he sees their movement up on the roof where he just was half a minute ago.

 

Donnie looks down and immediately notices the girl.

“Oh man. Raph’s blown our cover. He’s been seen.” They’d arrived just in time to see the head lights illuminate the alley.

“Are we gonna have to kill her?” Mikey asks wide eyed to Leo.

“What?! What is with you and Raph wanting to kill people that see us?” Leo asks. “Are we going to have to kill the entire police force next? Or April? Or Casey?” He whispers harshly.

He signals down to his brother, a thumb across the throat followed by him thumbing into the distance, adding to the ‘get out of there’ gesture with his head as Mikey and Donnie continue to panic about another human knowing their secret.

 

“Uh…Raph. Raphael.” He finally answers you. You notice him staring at a roof a lot and you turn to look. Three more turtle brothers duck down, unseen by you.

“Raphael, huh? Like the Renaissance artist-”

He clears his throat and his arms swing awkwardly. “Uh…yeah?”

He looks up to his brothers again and now they’re all trying to signal him to _just get the fuck outta there._ Mikey’s jumping from foot to foot and pointing with both hands, Donnie can’t seem to rationalize the problem fast enough, and Leo is just glaring down at him with his arms crossed in his typical Disappointed Eldest Brother look.

“-Or like the archangel?” You continue.

You can see him freeze and his head whips around to fully look at you.

Did she really just…?

_Dear god, girl, are you flirting with a Beast? Have you lost your mind?_

_I’ve been talking to myself for the past…ten…years or so, so probably, yeah._

“I get the feeling that you have somewhere to go,” you say when you see his eyes flick skyward again. “But thanks,” you reiterate like a broken record, lifting your purse up slightly to indicate what you’re thanking him for. You reach into the tiny side pocket to get your phone. “I imagine you’d want to get out of here before I call the cops on that guy anyway.”

“Yeah, that would…yeah.” He shuffles around you, heading for the fire escape behind you. He can flip and climb up to the roof with the metal bars of the walkway.

But before he spirits away, he passes by the stalker you beat up earlier, who has clearly woken up and is trying to sit up. Raph gives him one departing punch to knock him back out again.

You flinch at the sound of his fist hitting flesh, then smile to yourself. See? He was looking out for you, like a guardian angel. You’re just no damsel in distress who needed help in this case.

He flips up the fire escape like some kind of ninja. As he leaps away and you dial 9-1-1, you swear you hear more voices as four turtle brothers leave the scene as fast as they can.

“Raph, did you just talk to a girl that wasn’t April?”

“Shut up, numbnuts!”

As your phone rings, you smile. “Hope to see you around… _Raphael_.”


	2. Stealth part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like this is just word vomit. The beginning came to my easily, the middle and end...not so much. This was supposed to be from Raphael's point of view, but it just ended up being 3rd person POV. Whoops.

“Alright, guys,” Leo says, sheathing his swords in their scabbards on his shell and hopping down from his training platform. “Time to head out.”

Summoned by The Eldest, Leo’s brothers emerge from the depths of their lair. Donnie appears silently from his screen corner, attaching gadgets to his person. Mikey comes out from the kitchen stuffing a last minute snack into his mouth. Raph can’t help but announce his presence like a small earthquake, jumping down from his work out bench.

“And maybe this time,” Leo pushes lightly on Raph’s plastron, “we can stick _together_?” His voice inflects upward like a question, but the others can still pick up the threat in their fearless leader’s voice.

Raph rolls his eyes and steps away from Leo’s touch, not wanting to engage in a confrontation tonight.

“You have _got_ to let that go, Leo.” Donnie comes to Raphael’s defense. “That incident was weeks ago. And if any of us had been in Raph’s position, we would have done the same thing. It’s not like any of us can read minds and know if any given person in the entire city knows self-defense.”

“Although reading minds would be totally awesome!” Mikey chimes in, blue eyes bright at the idea.

“Besides, the girl seems fine and the police reports I hacked later said the guy was a Purple Dragon. He doesn’t even remember the girl hitting him.” He puts a finger up to his lips in thought. “Strangely he remembered Raph hitting him,” he trails off. “But since the police are on our side, they just put him away.”

“Whatever.” Leo waves a dismissive hand as if to clear the subject out of the air before turning and heading for the exit, expecting his brother’s to follow him outside.

Raphael places a hand on Donnie’s shoulder. “Thanks, man.”

“No problem, bro.” Donnie pats the hand on his shoulder with a smile before following his blue brother’s lead.

“You know what?” Leo asks out loud once they get topside. The sun still has an hour till it sets, so the city is bathed in orange light and wears summer smog like a scarf. “Why doesn’t Raphael take the lead tonight?”

Raph gives Leo a suspicious glare through his red bandana while Mikey and Donnie behind him exchange nervous glances. Leo just won’t let it go, will he? Seems maybe Donatello’s words didn’t get through to him after all. Maybe if Donnie talks to sensei later, Splinter can talk some sense into the sword wielding turtle. But it seems like it’s still not going to happen tonight.

“You took the words right out of my mouth.” Raphael pushes past Leo and looks back at his brothers. “Try to keep up with me, boys.” And the red turtle is off like a shot.

He keeps a good lead. If Raph’s brothers get close to him, he just leaps across the street, running parallel to them. None of them can ever get up to Raphael’s speed. Very quickly, it becomes more like a competition between the two oldest brothers and leaves poor Mikey and Donnie a bit farther behind, as they never want to get in between those two when they’re fighting. Raphael tries to keep his lead and Leo tries to stay close behind him. The two aren’t even watching out for crime anymore. Leo’s just trying to keep a close eye on Raph and Raph is just trying to keep a good distance between himself and Leo.

 _I know he’s my brother, but sometimes Leo just drives me nucking futs!_ Raphael thinks to himself. _He thinks he’s so great and perfect, but I bet if he’d been in my position that night with that girl, he’d have leaped down and probably swept her off her feet or something. Taken out the creepoid himself in no time flat, because he’s such a Prince and I’m such a good-for-nothing Beast-_

Raphael wasn’t paying attention to where he was running. It wouldn’t have helped him, because the attack came out of nowhere. He only sees a pole like Donnie’s bo staff swing in front of him and suddenly he is down for the count, the wind knocked out of him. He grunts in pain as he lies face down on the roof, hugging his plastron with one arm.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry! I didn’t know anyone had come up here! I couldn’t hear, I’m so so so so sorry! I…I have ice packs just for this occasion!” His attacker seems to rip a pair of Bluetooth earbuds out and they rush over to a cooler without even looking back at him.

Raphael tries to regain his breath after the hit. He may be bullet proof but _man_ , that was a _hit_. What was he even hit with? As he watches his assailant open the container, he spots a few weapons lying around the roof. A few are wood, while other weapons are about as real as a child’s Halloween costume. Those that have blades seem to be simple sheet metal and not sharpened at all.

A shadow falls over him and he looks up as he still heaves for breath. His amber eyes take in long, black gi pants, an actual martial arts black belt, a black workout shirt clinging to a female form, and finally a familiar face.

“Well, well, well,” she says. “Didn’t think I’d see you again. I’d recognize that red bandana anywhere.” The face of the girl he’d tried to save weeks ago fills his vision as she squats down and holds a gel ice pack to the middle of his plastron. “You know, I think there’s a joke here somewhere about someone falling head over heels for me so fast,” she teases, placing the weapon down. Raph recognizes the wide blade on the end of a long pole with a pointed end. He never quite knew the name of the weapon, though. It had Chinese origins, not Japanese like his family adopted.

Raph can’t help but stare at this girl. Not because she’s stunningly beautiful or anything cliché, but she’s the first person who still hasn’t fainted or reacted with hatred when seeing him. Instead, she hit him and apologized and offered first aid. Even April had fainted when she’d first seen the four of them. He adjusts the ice pack on his plastron to where the pain is radiating.

 “Raph!” A voice calls out behind her. She whirls around and he’d _almost_ warn his brothers about sneaking up on this girl, if he wasn’t still mad at Leo. Or if he could fill his lungs with air.

Suddenly, she’s surrounded by three more mutant turtles and she can only step back towards the prone and injured Raphael.

“Hoooooly shit, there’s more of you.” Her eyes jump from turtle to turtle, noticing their different colored masks. Instead of being afraid, the three brothers notice something flash in her eyes that seem to say, “I’ll take you out, too, if I have to.”

“Hello, miss. It’s okay.” Leo puts his hands out to diffuse any misunderstandings that may arise in the next couple seconds. “We aren’t going to hurt you.”

“Can’t say the same for her,” Raph gasps out, trying to get on all fours. Or three, as one hand still holds the ice pack to his bruised ~~ego~~ plastron.

She gestures at the downed turtle with a thumb while addressing the others. “I’m not a doctor, but sarcasm’s usually a good indication someone will be okay.”

“I’ll check on him,” Donatello volunteers, snickering. He crouches next to his brother, but other than the ice pack, he really can’t do much more for his red brother until they get back to the lair.

“I’m really sorry if my _brother_ ,” Leo spits the word out, “upset you in any way, miss.”

She shrugs. “He didn’t. I’m the one that hit him.” There’s a few moments of silence as they watch Donnie check over Raph. Donnie gives a good ribbing to the bruised plastron and Raph hisses while glaring daggers and Mikey laughs good-naturedly at Raph’s misfortunes.

“So…brothers?” She asks, looking up at the blue masked turtle standing next to her. “Are you guys named after archangels, too? I’m going to guess you’re Michael?”

“Did you call, girl?” Mikey, thinking he heard his name, is more than eager to come over and talk to this girl that can beat up Raphael.

“Wait, seriously? Your name is Michael?” She asks, surprised.

“Well, it’s Michelangelo. My bro’s call my Mikey. You seem to have already met Raphael, but his attentive nurse is Donatello and Leonardo here is our leader.”

“Mikey,” Leo scolds, but the damage is done. Mikey never seemed to grasp the whole “ninjas live in the shadows, unnamed heroes” rules his older brothers followed.

“So not like archangels?”

“Nah, just Renaissance artists. But I’ll be your guardian angel if you want,” Mikey flirts, leaning towards her.

Her eyes widen as she leans away from his presence before placing her fingertips on his plastron. “I bet you would. But for future reference, I need my personal space.” She gently pushes him away. “I’d prefer your arm-” Mikey grins and flexes it to show off “-‘s length, because it’s longer than mine.” She ducks behind Leo and goes to check on Raphael while Leo tries and fails not to laugh at Mikey’s failed attempt at flirting.

“How is he, doctor? Is he going to live? Will he still be able to play the violin?” She asks.

Donnie lets out a giggle snort and Raph growls at the joke. “I’m afraid the violin is lost, nurse,” the purple masked turtle plays along with the sarcasm before his voice switches to normal, “but yeah, he’ll live. Your ice pack is fine, but we should probably get home where I have better medicine.”

“I’ve got quite a few medicines from my martial arts school in my apartment, if that’ll help. What do you need?” She gets a thoughtful look on her face. “Better question: what did I hit?” She twirls her finger around Raph’s form in a way that almost makes Raph feel exposed. “Is this flesh? Bone? I’m afraid I never paid attention in high school biology. Annnd I kind of don’t know what you are…” She trails off that last sentence.

“We’re turtles,” Donnie informs her. “And you hit his plastron, which is bone.”

She snaps, as if in victory. “I have just the medicine!” She pauses. “If human medicine can work on you?”

The purple turtle shrugs. “Depends on the ingredients.”

“You want to check?”

Donnie opens his mouth and starts to explain that it might just be easier to get Raphael back home, thanks anyways, but Leo answers for him. “Anything that’ll get Raphael up on his feet sooner, so we can get back to patrolling would be great, thanks.”

Donnie purses his lips. This little grudge is going too far. It’s one thing for those two to fight or compete, or give each other the cold shoulder, but putting Raphael’s health in jeopardy for a patrol they don’t _need_ to do is crossing the line.

“Sure, no problem,” she answers before Donnie can object. “I’m the apartment right below. I got lucky; I can come upstairs and practice without worrying about disturbing others.” She looks at her weapons and the cooler and sighs in a way that says, “I guess I’ll just take multiple trips.” She picks up her headphones and drapes them around her neck before picking up only one of her bamboo practice staves and the cooler in her arms. “Want to follow me?”

“We’ll be right behind you,” the blue masked turtle assures her.

She doesn’t pay attention to them following, her own steps drowned out by the loud music that still playing through the Bluetooth headphones, but when she lets herself into her studio dwelling, the four turtle brothers are already inside. She scrunches up her face in confusion as Donatello helps Raphael over to the couch, trying to figure out how they got in. As she puts one weapon back in the weapon stand, she notices the other weapons, including her beloved guan dao, are already in their niches on the rack. She finally notices her living room curtains barely shifting in the twilight breeze and her face scrunches up more as she tries to remember if she left a window open or not.

“So where’s this medicine?” Donatello asks.

“Uh, bathroom,” she replies. “Be right back. Make yourselves at home?” She invites, waving her hand. It’s still a question, since they somehow got in before she did. She leaves the living room and grabs some of her iron bone medicine from the bathroom cabinet without even turning on the light.

“How’s your kanji reading?” She asks the purple masked turtle, tossing him the bottle. He catches it with ease and pushes up his glasses to read the kanji.

“Fair,” he replies, studying the bottle.

She looks mildly surprised. “Really?” These turtle guys are just full of surprises. Renaissance painter names, ninja stealth abilities to get into her apartment, kanji reading… “Well, that’s the medicine I use after iron bone training. That stuff needs to stay on for ten minutes, and then I have another that goes on after that for an hour.”

“I don’t see anything that we can’t have on, so I guess, bottom’s up, Raph.” Donnie exchanges the ice pack from earlier with her for some cotton balls she offers. As he applies the medicine, she works at taking off her black belt, wrapping it in a neat knot and stretching while she can.

“How long have you practiced martial arts?” Leonardo asks, observing her as he waits for Raph’s medicine to be applied. He took over the only reclining chair she has.

She’s quiet for a couple seconds as she counts backwards in her head. “About five years now.”

“How’d you get into martial arts?” Leonardo continues, eyeing Mikey who’s looking through her bookshelf.

She answers with a shrug, seeming to withdraw inward a bit about the subject. “I don’t know, I just…I went through a bad break up right before I started and thought: hey, this is something I’ve always wanted to try. Why not now? Maybe I can make my outsides strong with my insides, so that no one can ever break my heart like that again.” She trails off and is quiet for a few seconds, and the silence turns awkward when she suddenly stands up. “I think it’s time for the second half of that medicine Raphael why don’t you come with me?” She says in a hurry, heading for the bathroom.

Everyone looks at Leo, who suddenly looks uncomfortable.

This just gives Raph a reason to finally gloat.

“Smooth, Leo. Why don’t you ask her about her childhood next?” He flinches as he stands up to do as she asks. Normally Raph isn’t one to be coddled with his injuries. Donnie just gives him facts of his injuries, puts on whatever, or let’s Raph put it on. Raph sometimes refuses, which is why he ends up with the scars he has, but he can’t turn down this girl’s offer for medicine. He doesn’t have it in him to tell her to fuck off and that he’ll be fine. His brothers know his anger; she does not. Besides, he already put on this first step stuff, what if not putting on the second layer causes burning pain or something?

He plants himself on the seat of the toilet as she rummages through the medicine cabinet for this second bottle of medicine and more cotton balls.

“Sorry about Leo,” he says. Wow, who would have known there’d be a day he’d apologize _for_ Leo?

She shakes her head. “Not his fault. No one can know when something is going to affect someone else. Honestly, after five years I shouldn’t be so affected by it.” She turns the dark red bottle upside down onto a cotton ball.

“This guy sounds like he was a real asshole.” Raphael pauses. “Need someone to go kick his ass for you?”

She giggles a little as she kneels in front of Raph to apply the second medicine. “Nah. His life has pretty much gone to shit and he has no one to thank for that but himself.”

Suddenly, Raph reels away from her. “Holy shit, this medicine stinks!” he exclaims. The first medicine was fine and scent-free, and it didn’t burn or sting. But this stuff smelled like burnt curry.

She looks up at him with an evil grin. “Yep. But it’s good for you. Good for you like broccoli.”

Raph squints at her; this girl managed to not only hit him, but play a mean prank on him? _And_ mention _veggies_? “You’re kind of evil, aren’t you?”

“Yep,” she says again, winking.

“Is this even real medicine?” he complains, his nose wrinkling.

“Yes. And it needs to be on for an hour before you can wash it off.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Dead serious, Raphael. Believe me, when I was a lower belt, I would come into class after the black belts had worked out and they’d put this stuff on their bruises and the whole studio _stank_ of this medicine and sweat. Now I’m one of those black belts that get to wear this medicine.” Her demeanor seems to soften and she pats his shoulder before moving to the sink to wash her hands. “I am sorry about hitting you, though.”

Raph straightens up and seems to puff out, even though his plastron still hurts and the medicine fills his lungs and burns his nostrils like spicy sausage and pepperoni pizza. “I’ve taken worse hits.”

She smiles in his direction. “I’m sure you have, Beast.”

His eyebrows knit together, not knowing where that nickname came from. Her smile turns into a knowing one and she picks at her shirt, pointing at the tail of his bandana. “I can read kanji, too, you know, Anger Buff Puff.” She points to her head before exiting the bathroom, leaving Raph amazed that someone recognized his kanji. Where did this girl come from and is she even real? Martial arts and kanji reading? ~~Can he trade her for April?~~

“How’s that violin situation going, nurse?” Donnie continues the joke from earlier as she comes back into the living room.

She throws her hands up. “Still no progress, doctor. But he’ll live to learn another instrument!” She gets out of the doorway so Raphael can come through behind her. Mikey has made himself the most at home, it seems, sitting upside down on her couch, engrossed in a volume of manga he picked out from her bookshelf. Donnie’s still studying her first medicine bottle and has even found her kanji dictionary, also from her bookshelf. Leo seems to be staring off into space, but he’s also staring in the direction of her weapons. To be fair, her living room is sparsely decorated so if someone wants to stare into space, they don’t have much to look at. She has her weapons rack next to her book shelf, a flat screen TV with a PS3 and a DVD player, and the couch and recliner are across from her queen bed, which is behind actual folding screens. It really does like someone just recently moved in. The space is lacking in homey touches, like artwork or random furniture; just the bare necessities.

Leo snaps out of it when Raph reenters the room. “If Raphael is all patched up, we really should be heading out.” He stands, and his brothers slowly follow his lead. Donnie reluctantly puts the kanji dictionary back, making a mental note to start looking up some of those kanji from the medicine bottle on his phone to cross reference their Chinese meanings during some down time.

Mikey frowns before turning back to her. “Hey, uh…can I borrow this book?”

Her eyes flick down to the manga and back up to Mikey’s pleading face a couple times. “I’m afraid have a policy about my books not leaving my library-” Mikey shoulders droop in disappointment “-but,” she continues, “you can come by and read it whenever you want.” Mikey’s face breaks into a grin that could rival the sun.

“You mean it?” He asks.

“Of course. That series never became popular, but I love it, so it’d be nice to see someone else giving it a try.”

“Thanks, girl!” Mikey’s so happy, he’s actually the first one to leap back out the window they entered from, followed by Donnie. Raph leaves with a gruff ‘thanks’ before joining his younger brothers.

Leo is the last one out the window and she’s still marveling at these superhero turtles that leave through windows like ninjas, but the blue masked turtle pauses halfway out.

“How come you aren’t scared of us? Don’t you find us disgusting? Or anything?” Leo asks. He, too, remembers well the night they broke into police headquarters and the cops started yelling about monsters.

“To be honest, Leonardo, I’ve watched far too many, you’ll forgive my use of this term I hope, monsters-in-New-York cartoons growing up, I am honestly not at all surprised to see you four. What I didn’t expect is that I’d be lucky enough to run into you.”

Leo raises an eyebrow under his mask. “‘Lucky,’ huh?”

Her only response is to shrug. “Have you ever heard of a series called Gargoyles?”

 “What?” Leo asks, blinking in confusion.

She gasps and puts a hand over her heart. “Boy, I hope you guys are real and that this wasn’t some dream and that you come back. I will show you the wonders of Gargoyles. It’s what first started my dreaming of moving to New York City.”

“Maybe we will.” Leo leans out the window. “Good night, miss.”

“Good night, ninja turtles,” she jokes, shutting the window behind him.


	3. Befriend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You make your first friend

Mikey had waited as long as he could. But after only a couple of days, he couldn’t take it anymore.

Raph and Leo had finally gotten over their little grudge after Leo had met the girl Raph had run into.  No one knew for sure if that’s what settled it, or if it had been Raph taking a hit to the shell. All that mattered was the dynamics of the lair were back to normal.

But Mikey _desperately_ wanted to read that girl’s manga.  And she _had_ said he could come over any time to read it.

Luckily for Michelangelo, Leo declared the night an “on-call” night. They'll monitor the police scanners, but if nothing pressing came up, they’d get to stay in training or chilling.

Mikey tries to do other activities at first, but he’s just too antsy. Donatello can tell, because he’s always the first one Mikey comes to annoy when he can’t occupy his mind or hands. It’s not long before Donnie’s yelling at him to get out, followed by a crashing sound.

“Leo, I’m just gonna…go topside for a bit and grab some air?” He lies not-so-subtly. It’s not exactly a lie; he wants to go skateboarding. He’s just leaving out where he’s going to end up. He even waves the board in the air for emphasis.

“Sure thing, Mikey,” Leo pants out as he flails around practicing a form on his small training pad. Leo might not have even processed what Mikey said, but it works in the orange masked turtle’s advantage.

Out in the city, Michelangelo’s not the only one who’s antsy tonight. When Mikey eventually finds the girl’s apartment building, he finds her on the rooftop, just like last time. This time she’s not surrounded by weapons. Only a couple of water bottles with questionable-looking contents, a random 4x4, and a mini speaker that glows green in the twilight as it plays music. Tonight she’s practicing with a burned rattan bo staff. The staff seems to be more of a terrible dance partner than a practice weapon to her music when Mikey gets close.

“Hey, girl!” Mikey greets from the roof’s edge before approaching her. He doesn’t want to get whacked in the shell like Raphael.

She gasps and whirls, swinging the staff around to take out whoever is sneaking up on her. Raph’s right, one does not want to sneak up on this girl.

“Oh, it’s you!” She sounds happy to see him and grins. “Or at least one of you. You’re…Michel…angelo, right?”

Mikey gasps, elated that she remembered. “Yeah, girl!”

“Yeah, I remembered the whole ‘Michael-archangel, Michelangelo-painter’ conversation.” She moves to pause the music and turn off the speaker and the green glow fades. “So are the others with you?”

“Nah, you just get the pleasure of my company tonight,” Mikey jokes. “What are you up to tonight? More training?”

She chuckles, reaching for one of those water bottles by the speaker. “Yep. Tell me, have you trained with this? Catch!” She grabs it and lobs it at the orange masked turtle.

Mikey expects a water bottle full of liquid and its surprising extra weight throws him off as it crashes into his plastron.

“Oof! What’s in this, lead?” He asks as he brings it up to his face to inspect it.

“Sand,” she clarifies. “For tiger claw training.” She holds up her hands, slightly bending her fingers to form mock tiger paws. “They also double as hand weights. And to answer your question, I’m not doing anything tonight. I’m just out burning off some excess energy.” She holds up a hand to prove that she’s actually shakier than she first let on.

Mikey gasps and immediately slides in to grab her hand to comfort and stop the shaking. “What’s wrong, girl?” His reaction was instinctual and instant; time seems to freeze for him as he realizes his mistake, remembering her request about personal space and the fact that he’s a mutant who only has three fingers. The turtle’s heart almost stops when she doesn’t withdraw in disgust; instead giveing it a grateful, gentle squeeze before releasing his hand.

“It’s no big deal. My rent is due in two days, but my bank account is almost dry, and there’s been some problem with the pay from my job. So I’m just trying not to freak out,” she explains, shrugging. “Trying to distract myself in any way I can, get my mind off of it until the bank website refreshes in the morning.”

“Anything I can do?”

Before you can answer in the negative, Mikey slides up into her space again.

“I know! Have you seen the video of the cat that plays Chopsticks _with the chopsticks_?”

\-----

And that’s how, only a few minutes later, Mikey has helped you carry your practice things down to your apartment. (He used the stairs with you this time, but he had to be quick about it. “My bros say we’re ninjas who have to move in the shadows,” he explains, which has you snorting in disbelief at the ‘ninja’ part.)

As you put things away how you like them, Mikey finds your tablet, fingers dancing across the touch screen to find the funny cat video to cheer you up.

“Man, I could go for a pizza, though,” he muses as he pulls up Youtube.

“Pizza? Man, I haven’t had delivery in months.”

Mikey gasps and his head snaps up to look at you in horror, finger paused midway to the search menu.

“What?” You shrug off his horrified look. “It’s cheaper and easier to cook for myself. We just had this conversation: I have. No money,” you emphasize.

And that’s how, less than half an hour later, you have your first delivery pizza in months, courtesy of the orange masked turtle. You told him any topping was fine, but Mikey played it safe anyway and ordered a simple cheese pizza.

“If this doesn’t cheer you up, girl, I don’t know what will.”

“It’s already working,” you assure him, taking a big bite and pulling the slice away from your face, making a long chain of cheese. Your eyes roll back and you hum in pleasure. “It’s been soooo long,” you reiterate.

“Take a slice of pizza every five minutes,” Mikey jokes.

“Will do, doctor.” You chuckle, taking another huge bite. “This is so bad for my workout routine,” you say, grabbing a napkin and wiping your mouth. “But whatever, I guess today is now a cheat day.”

“You know it!” Mikey encourages like the little devil he is, taking two slices for himself and jamming them into his mouth. At least he politely wipes his hand on his own napkin before grabbing your tablet instead of getting greasy fingers all over your technology.

The evening quickly devolves into the dreaded Youtube stream of consciousness. One funny cat video leads to another, leads to another, leads to funny animal videos, leads to any video cracking the both of you up.

Until your tablet’s battery dies.

You both don’t want the fun to stop just yet. Mikey will stick around until you’re unconscious if it keeps your mind off of doom and gloom. You seem to sense that and appreciate it, because you don’t exactly want to be alone with your thoughts.

“Wanna watch a movie?” you suggest.

“Sure. Whattya got?”

“Well, there’s my favorite movie series. I love the action with the explosions and the robots, but I hate how the director uses the actress. She was just meant to be eye candy for the boy audience so her outfits never make any sense for the action going on. And she can’t even throw a damn punch. Oh! That gives me an idea!” You rush over to your movie shelf and pull a specific movie out.

“Tada!” You hold the movie case out for the mutant turtle to see. “Have you ever seen Kung Fu Panda?”

“Uh…no?”

Now it’s your turn to gasp in horror at him, placing your hand over your heart in mock hurt. “Is it a lesson about anyone being able to start studying martial arts, no matter their age or body type? Yes. Is every character based on an _actual_ kung fu form? Heck yes.”

Mikey chuckles at how excited you got over this movie. “Play that movie then, girl.”

“I will. But first, we are going to do this right.” You head over to the PS3 to insert the Blu-ray disk, letting the movie load to the menu screen while you work.

“What do you mean by that?” Mikey asks.

“You’ll see. Will you grab the two chairs?” You point to the makeshift kitchen with the tiny square dining table and two chairs. While he does that, you head over to your bed and pull blankets and pillows out of the storage drawers in your bed frame.

“Where do you want them?” Mikey asks as you dig around for more blankets.

“Put them in front of the couch, back to back." Mikey could be a mind reader because he does exactly as you envisioned in your head.

“So what are you planning, girl?” Mikey asks. He finds out the answer when a large blanket gets thrown over him and the chairs and he erupts with laughter. You throw all the pillows at him as he yells in mild protest while you straighten the blanket over the chairs and couch.

When you peek in at Mikey, he’s already made a comfortable nest out of the pillows you attacked him with. He picked up on the blanket fort idea. He waves at you when he sees your head in the opening, darkening the bright TV screen.

“Ready?” Mikey asks, patting the spot next to him.

“Almost.” You walk into your kitchen and prepare a treat. “If it’s going to be a cheat day, I’m going big or going…well, I’m already home, but you get the idea,” you tell him.

You carefully hand the turtle two full glasses with a spoon inside before you crawl inside.

“What is it?” Mikey asks. “It’s not sand is it?”

“Nope, even better. Just trust me and try it.” You take your glass and set your glass down to fiddle with the PS3 controller to start the movie.

Mikey can make out the shape and smell of vanilla ice cream, but what kind of creature serves ice cream in a glass? He takes a spoonful and his eyes grow wide as the root beer hits his tongue and mixes with the frozen treat.

“Like your root beer float?” you ask with a Cheshire grin as the movie starts.

Mikey nods slowly, spoon still in his mouth. Sure, he’s had soda. But he never thought to mix any of them with ice cream; that kind of thing just never comes up down in the sewers. Mikey already starts plotting what other ice creams he could mix with Orange Crush as the movie plays.

You both make it about half way through the second movie before you start to crash hard from the pizza’s carbs and the root beer float’s sugar.

With your inhibitions lowered from lack of sleep and a sugar crash, you tell Mikey, “Hey. Thanks for hanging out with me tonight.”

“No problem, girl,” an equally sleepy Mikey answers. “You’re a lot of fun.”

You barely manage a snicker as you start to fall asleep, despite the noisy ultimate showdown going on in the movie. You swear your apartment seems a little lighter. Is the sun coming up outside? “Thanks. You’re the first person to hang out with me since I moved here. You’re like…the first friend I…made.” And you are finally asleep.

Beside you, Michelangelo is suddenly a bit more awake at what you said. He’s your first friend here? That’s so bittersweet. While he may be girl crazy, a part of him deep down knew that it could never work out with a human girl. What girl would stick around for more than thirty seconds for him to explain he’s not dangerous or evil or an alien? And sure, he wanted to flirt with you the moment he saw you and see what would happen. But he feels his heart swell with love and kindness for you at what you said. If a friend is what you need, he will be the best one you’ve ever had.

\-----

You are the first to stir, but only by a few seconds. Your apartment is already lit from the sun already high in the sky.

_Ugh, my mouth tastes like something died in it_ , you think. _I should know better than to eat like a fifteen year old._

You hear Mikey stirring next to you and before you’ve even had your coffee you manage to joke, “I am going to have to run like three miles to burn off all that sugar from last night.”

Mikey just mumbles incomprehensibly. “What time is it?” he asks.

“Uhh…” You reach for your phone, but you didn’t charge it when you started Kung Fu Panda 2, so it’s dead. “Hold on.” You crawl out of the blanket fort, popping some joints as you stand, and head over to your bed to check the alarm clock on your nightstand. “It’s almost noon.”

“What?!” Mikey jumps to his feet, looking like a weird ghost as he stands in the middle of the blanket fort. “Nonononono,” he panics, destroying the make shift fort as he rushes at you, throwing the blanket off of him. “Tell me you’re joking, Tigress.” After saying how much you like tiger forms and Tigress’s representation of them during the movie last night, you now seem to have a new nickname.

“I’m afraid not?” Your brow is knit in confusion and you point to the only other clock you have in the apartment other than your cellphone. “Why what’s the deal? Did you miss your curfew?”

“This is serious!” Mikey whines, running to the window to double check. Yep, that is definitely the sun, bright and shining as his bandana. “Ohhhh man, Leo is gonna kill me,” he freaks out, placing his fists on the side of his head. He looks around for his gear, having taken it off last night to lay down more comfortably on the floor and pillows. Enjoying pizza, funny videos, soda floats, and new company had completely put the thought of his brothers, master, and responsibilities out of his mind.

“I am so dead. So dead,” Mikey mutters, finding the belt that carries his cellphone. Donnie managed to procure older smart phones for all the brothers and program them. Sure enough, it is full of missed texts, calls, and his voice mail box is full. He groans, running a hand down his face. He can already hear Disappointed Leader’s speech. Donnie might have been able to put a tracking device in each phone, but his brothers can’t come out and find him any easier than he can go out and get back home.

“Leo’s going to have me doing chores for a week,” Mikey groans, sinking dejectedly to the ground.

Meanwhile, you’ve been making coffee while he freaks out. “Soooo what, are you a vampire or something?” you ask as you sip your morning ambrosia.

“No. Sort of. I can’t go outside and get home without being seen,” he says sadly, waving a hand to indicate the brightly lit city outside your window.

“Yeah, I kind of figured, considering I always run into you guys at night.” You swirl your coffee to mix the creamer in better. You are surprisingly calm about this whole thing. “Are you gonna be okay?”

“Other than my brother’s killing me when I can finally get home? Just peachy,” Mikey continues to whine. “Can I stay here until sunset?”

“Of _course_ you can, Mikey, you don’t even need to ask. I work from home, so it’s no problem.” Mikey visibly relaxes and makes a relieved noise. “It’s kind of my fault for keeping you here anyway. Why don’t you check in with them while I make some breakfast. Do you want anything in particular?”

“Nah, I’ll just eat the leftover pizza. Thanks though.”

You shrug a ‘suit yourself’ look to him, before heading into the kitchen to make toast and more coffee while he checks in with his brothers. You try not to listen in too much. Mostly you see him gesticulate widely next to the remains of the pillow fort and you can hear a whiny and huffy tone from him, like a child who doesn’t want to leave the sleepover just yet.

You’re munching on your toast, reading the news on your now-charged tablet, when Mikey enters the kitchen space with the pizza box left out from last night. He politely finds a plate in the cupboards and puts the remaining pieces on his retrieved dish, popping in into the microwave.

When he sits down, you narrow your eyes at him, your gaze going between his reheated pizza breakfast and him.

“What?”

“Maybe you are a monster,” you say, eyeing his grossly reheated pizza. “What kind of person _reheats_ pizza?”

“What kind of person just eats gross, _cold_ pizza?” He challenges, staring you in the eyes and biting down into his breakfast to try and gross you out further.

“ _You’re gross_ ,” you sass at him, stuffing the rest of your breakfast into your mouth.

Mikey doesn’t retort, just continues to stare at you, making enjoyment noises as he eats his reheated pizza.

“Ugh,” you tease, going to the sink to drop the dishes in. “Hey, do you mind if I go out for a run? I need to work off all the bad calories I ate last night. I shouldn’t be gone for more than half an hour. You have access to my tablet, the TV, and PS3. I don’t have cable or satellite TV, but I have Netflix and Hulu. Or my bookshelf if you’re inclined to read.”

Mikey chokes when he’s reminded that the whole reason he came to see you was to read that manga. Well, it looks like he has all day to do that now. He thumps on his chest, nodding. He finishes his breakfast as you change into running clothes, stretch, and head outside. Mikey’s mildly jealous that you can at least go outside whenever you want, but he wouldn’t say that out loud. When he finishes his breakfast, he just puts his dishes with yours before he heads over to the bookshelf and grabs the series he wanted to read a few days ago.

You do return sooner than he expects and you find him on the couch, sucked into the manga, which makes you smile because you feel that series was seriously underappreciated by your friends. While he’s still engrossed, you take a shower before starting up your computer to check your bank account. You have been dreading this moment since you ingested your coffee and became more awake. You went for a run not only to work off bad calories, but the shakes and nervous energy were coming back with the dread of not making your rent payment on time tomorrow.

Sure enough, when you check your bank account, you have the same funds you had the day before, meaning very little. You sigh hard and place your head in your hands. You have no friends nearby that you’d feel comfortable asking for a loan from you have no friends period other than one mutant turtle so far. You can’t message and burden your home town friends for a money transfer. You are _not_ going to ask your mom… Great, you moved all the way across the country and now you’re going to be homeless in a month-

“It’ll be okay,” Mikey suddenly says from over on the couch. You sit up, startled from your spiraling inner doom.

“Huh?”

“I saw you tense up. You’re worrying about your money problem again. But I have a feeling that it’ll work itself out today.”

“I wish I could have your optimism, Michelangelo,” you shake your head, but you’re smiling at his encouragement.

“I just gave you some,” he counters. “You can even keep the change.”

“Haha.” You turn back to the computer and open up some of your work, briefly getting up to grab your kanji dictionary.

Mikey is not only easily amused by your book collection, but he’s on his best behavior. He realizes he can’t just go and bug you when he’s bored like he does with his brothers. It’s not so bad to be stuck inside, though, since you have windows when their underground dwellings never could. The sunlight with the weird sleep schedule from last night work to make Mikey very sleepy. He ends up dozing off for a couple hours, like a cat in a sunspot.

Eventually he wakes and gets up from the couch, gently placing the manga to mark his place, and heads over to your workspace. To him, it seems like you haven’t moved in hours; you were in the same position when he started a new volume and even when he woke up. He peeks at your computer screen over your shoulder. “So what do you do for work? How do you work from home?”

You’d put in ear buds a while ago, so you take them out when the turtle asks his question. “I translate manga from Japanese to English.”

“Whoah.” Michelangelo is truly impressed. His family adopted some of Japanese culture, but this girl can read and write and comprehend? “When did you learn Japanese?”

“I got into anime when I was a child and there was this period where everyone judged you on whether you watched the subtitled anime spoken in its original Japanese, or watched the English dub. So I took Japanese as soon as it was offered at school. Then I minored in it in college. I majored in international politics. That’s mostly why I moved out here; someday soon I hope I can get a job at the UN Headquarters. Until then I have to make money, so-” you gesture to the computer screen which currently has an enlarged manga page on it as well as an open Word document with kanji and its subsequent translation underneath “-I do whatever freelance translation jobs I can find online.”

“Whoah,” is all Mikey can say again. “Japanese and martial arts; you’re really smart, aren’t you?” Mikey admires.

“Nah, I’m nothing special,” you contradict, turning back to the computer, signaling the conversation is over.

But Michelangelo will have none of that. “Speaking of martial arts…” the turtle spins your chair away from the computer and you protest. “I think it’s time for a work break. Show me what skills you got, Tigress.”

You roll your eyes, but give in. It’ll be good to stretch your muscles for a bit. “Do you want to head up to the roof, or just stay in here? Normal human working hours are until five pm, but New York is the city that never sleeps, isn’t it? At least, according to Frank Sinatra.”

Mikey chuckles at your joke. “Can you check the roof?” Mikey requests. “I don’t get to be out in the sun that much.”

“Sure. Vitamin D is good for you. And so is food. Did you eat all the pizza?”

Mikey looks guiltily down at his hands, because he didn’t think about what you would eat later. “Yes?”

“No problem. I didn’t want any more pizza anyway. I’m going to make a smoothie. Do you want anything? More protein, maybe?”

“I’ll try whatever you’re having?” Mikey asks.

You smile. “Sure.” You stand from the chair and stretch again, trying to stay limber after how you abused your body sleeping on the floor last night and staying in a chair for the last few hours. You prepare enough ingredients for two smoothies; banana, blueberries, spinach and a few spoons of peanut butter for extra protein and flavor.

Mikey was hungrier than he first realized and the smoothie, despite all its protein, doesn’t fill the teenager up. You whip up some scrambled eggs, throwing in some cheese. At first he feels bad needing to eat your food with your money situation, but you assure him you buy in bulk. You even show him your freezer, which is packed with frozen, homemade meals that make him drool and want to spirit you to the lair so you can cook for him and his brothers all the time. He has to eat a couple more snacks before he feels full and you just shake your head, wondering when you adopted a large turtle child.

As it turns out, some girls are tanning on the roof, so you two have to stay inside for a while longer. You two do whatever training you can come up with, but it’s not much when you have to worry about furniture and neighbors. Mikey notices your foam nunchaku and gives you shit about them until you flip him off and you two go through the various hits you know with the weapon.

You check upstairs a couple more times and the tanning girls are finally gone. He escapes out your window, which you are beginning to accept as normal, and you bring your sand bottles and the 4x4 again. You show him how the bottles can help with training a stronger grip and how he can strike the 4x4 to strengthen the bones in his hands, which is something he’d never tried before.

You’re showing him a tiger form with the whole “Tigress” joke, when the sun sets below the horizon and yet again, you find yourself suddenly surrounded by mutant turtle brothers again.

“Mikey!” They all exclaim, relieved. It lasts a split second before Raphael smacks him in the back of the head.

“You moron, what were you thinking staying out after dark?” He lectures.

“And you didn’t check in _all night_!” Mother Hen Leonardo gets in, too. “We thought the worst had happened! We were developing plans to storm TCRI if we needed to!”

“Leo’s exaggerating,” Donnie says deadpan, not impressed with Leo’s hyperbole to scare Mikey. “We knew where you were from the tracker I put in your phone. _These two_ worried all night that you’d been in some fight with Foot ninjas or worse or something. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t the only logical one in this family,” he mutters the last sentence so no one can hear.

“Aw, you were worried about me?” Mikey says.

“Shut up, dipstick, you’re in trouble!” Raph hits him again.

Leonardo turns to you. “It seems our paths have crossed again, miss. Thank you for taking care of our brother.”

“It was no problem, really. He took care of me in return and kept me company when I wasn’t feeling too well.”

The blue masked turtle chuckles. “Yeah, Mikey can be empathetic like that.”

Once again, it’s like his name summons him and he comes bounding over to you, lifting you in a big hug. “I gotta go before Raph kicks the shit out of me,” he tells you. “But I put my phone number in your cellphone if you want to text me,” he whispers into your ear.

“Thanks, Mikey.” You hug him just as fiercely back.

He sets you back on the ground, leaving a hand on your shoulder. “And everything should be okay now. Be good, Tigress. And bookmark that manga for me?”

“Will do.”

And the four turtles disappear into the night once again, escorting their littlest brother home. Finally alone, you haul everything back downstairs.

Since Mikey distracted you for a full day, you slide back in front of your computer to check your bank account again. There are the funds from your job, finally deposited. You release a huge sigh, the knot in your stomach loosens, and the tension just flows out of your body like water. You inhale again and it feels like the first time you’ve been able to breathe in the last 24 hours.

Mikey was right; at the end of the day, it all ended up okay.


	4. Anger part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You finally get "invited" to the Turtle Lair

Now it is Mikey’s turn to be in trouble with Leonardo. Mikey can get away with a lot more than Raphael because Leonardo knows there’s no ill intent behind Mikey’s shenanigans.

The orange masked turtle’s punishment is if he wants to visit you, he has to have another brother along as an escort. This is to deter the risk of exposure if he returns during the early morning hours, as well as prevent any more sleepovers. Over the next couple of months that’s how you get to know the other turtles.

Mikey’s visits are predictably unpredictable. The turtles still regularly patrol for Foot Clan activity. Sometimes he swings by before they all head out for the night, other times he can stay longer; it varies on who accompanies him and who patrols. As each brother gets a turn to chaperone Michelangelo, you get to know their personalities, quirks, and hobbies.

You learn Donatello is a brainiac when he offers to optimize your computer for you and makes it run faster than any Geek Squad techie could. You’re not a genius like he is, but you can keep up relatively well with his experiment explanations. His eyes light up when you ask about them, thrilled that you’re eager to learn; which is more than he can say about his brothers most days. He enjoys perusing your kanji dictionary and untranslated manga, which is exactly how you go into your job.

You pick up on Leonardo’s need for order and rules. You can see it on his face when you leave a mess in your apartment that he wants to clean it up, but he resists to honor your space. It can take a while for him to fully relax when he’s at your apartment with Mikey, like he’s always expecting an earthquake to strike or ninjas to come bursting through your windows and doors. If he even has time to unwind at all before he leaves again, practically shoving Mikey out the window. He rarely accompanies Mikey; he prefers to just patrol himself, but he’s always super polite when he does visit.

Getting to know the turtle that watched out for you that fateful night is the most fun. He took the invitation of “my place is your place” very literal. Raphael is all for relaxing as soon as he arrives with Mikey. He’ll immediately claim the whole couch and the PS3 until you and Mikey fight him off and banish him to the floor until he behaves. Whenever it comes to challenging Raphael’s dominance, whether it’s with your fake martial weapons or who is Player One, it’s always you and Mikey against him.

So it is that one evening, Mikey comes to visit. Raphael is Mikey’s partner for the night. He’s a bit grumpy about it, because there was an MMA fight on pay-per-view that he’d planned on ~~getting Donnie to hack~~ watching.

The turtles go to the fire escape outside your window first, but don’t see you inside. They climb up one level to find you on the roof, still dressed in your gi uniform. Before they approach you, the rule is to always make sure you don’t have any weapons in your hands first, even though nothing’s happened since the first time you hit Raph.

You seem to be trying a form they haven’t seen before, so like students they watch to see what you’ll do. But something seems wrong. Your shoulders rise often, like your breathing is shallow. As you move your arms, you seem shaky. It seems like you never finish any one movement. Suddenly you shake your arms out in frustration, a loud growl escaping your throat. The two brothers share a look before Mikey vaults over the roof ledge.

“Tigress? You okay?” He calls out.

When you turn around, Mikey sees that your eyes are puffy from crying.

“Aw, Tigress.” He wraps you up in a big hug. “What’s the matter? What happened?”

You’re quite for a few seconds, enjoying Mikey’s comfort, before you step out of his arms. “We did sparring in class today,” you explain.

“So? Don’t you have fun getting to wail on someone?” Raph asks, emphasizing his point by smashing one fist into his palm.

To answer his question, you make a face at him. “This is the first time I sparred at this new school. The black belts at my school weren’t bad. But this time…” You step into one of the overhead lights and turn your arms over.

The boys gasp, mouths forming surprised O’s.

Your arms have quite a few red blossoming bruises. Once you’ve shown them both sides of your arms, you reach down and roll up your pant legs to show even more pink blemishes on your shins that will soon develop into purple blots.

“Holy shit,” Mikey whispers.

Even Raph is stunned. He didn’t realize humans could bruise so easily. After all, he never stuck around to study the injuries of Foot soldiers he beat up. “Whose ass do I need to kick?” Raph growls, popping his knuckles as a wave of angry protectiveness washes over him. No one gets to pick on the family’s new friend other than him, and certainly not like this. He was ready to kick some ass that night you were in trouble, and he’s ready again.

You throw up your hands at Raph’s offer. You are past upset pain; now you get angry thinking about your class tonight. Unfortunately when you get angry, your eyes tear up. “I mean, sparring was fine before I moved here! We’d spar regularly in class, we went slow, we worked more on application. Sure, as a lower belt I was always afraid of the black belts because they had better control and hurt me anyways! But here! Here!” You’re on a rant now, furiously wiping at your traitorous eyes. “Here, the black belts are all assholes! They have absolutely _no_ control! It’s just a contest to see who can beat up the most people and how badly! I swear tonight was just about hazing the new girl!” You’re on a roll with your angry rant that has Raph secretly impressed that while you bruise easily, you also contain so much anger.

Suddenly, your phone vibrates in your pocket. You are momentarily distracted from your tirade as you pull it out to see who is calling. When your eyes land on the screen, Raph sees a white hot anger he hasn’t witnessed on anyone else before flash through your eyes.

You’d already been worked into a frenzy remembering your awful night of martial arts. But seeing the caller on your phone ratchets your anger up to eleven. Not wanting to deal with the caller and with your mind filled with fury, you chuck the phone as far from you as it can get.

“Mikey!” Raph points at the phone sailing through the air like a football.

“On it!” Michelangelo sprints for the phone and barely catches it with the tips of his fingers before it falls into the alley below. He barely gets a glimpse of the caller ID before the phone goes dark. He furrows his brows together, and files the information away for later.

As he heads back with your undamaged phone, the anger inside you has reached a boiling point. Like Old Faithful, it spews forth from your chest and you release a loud, primal yell from deep within you. At the same time down in the street, an emergency vehicle drives by, siren wailing and bouncing off the walls of all the surrounding buildings, so your frustrated scream is drowned out.

Raph watches you with new respect. Who would have guessed so much anger could exist in such a tiny, human body? Who would have known that another being could be as angry as him?

Mikey shuffles over and hands you your device. You shove it back into your pocket, trying to ignore the missed call light. “I _hate_ sparring,” you emphasize with the shove.

“But you took out that guy that one night,” Raph reminds you.

“And do you know how terrified I was?” You exclaim. “Do you have any idea how scared I was that he was going to know how to defend himself, too? Do you know how many different moves I went through in my head? I’m awful at sparring! All I can really do is defend myself from getting hurt, but you saw the bruises; I still get hurt anyway! I get injured but no one gets hurt by me.” Your anger builds again like a tide and you clench your fists, letting out another frustrated growl.

Raph recognizes the signs of pent up anger needing a release and an idea occurs to him. He pulls Mikey close to him.

“Bro, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Mikey’s blue eyes widen. He’d been thinking of ordering a pizza and popping in your favorite movie again. But he doubts that’s what Raph is thinking. “Uhh…” he stammers.

“What if we take her down to see Splinter? He can help her with sparring and she can work out with us better than she can here by herself.”

“I don’t know how Leo’s gonna feel about that, bro,” Mikey warns, tilting his head.

“You should know my rule of thumb with Leo by now, Mikey; it’s better to ask his forgiveness than permission. Do you have my back on this?”

Mikey closes his eyes in thought. He really doesn’t want to take any heat that’s going to be directed at Raph for this. Mikey’s been in hot water long enough. He also can’t believe Raph is going to hop back into the fire when he was there not that long ago. On the other hand, Raphael’s always had his back…

Mikey hums in conflict before conceding. “Fine.” He is so not going to take the fall with Raph. He is going to pick up some pizzas on the way back to the lair and let Raphael do Raphael. And then protect you from Leonardo’s wrath because this is not going to end well.

~~~~~

The boys have you close your eyes on the way to their home. It’s one thing for you to be in their home, but maybe keeping the way there a secret will help Leo feel better? That’s at least what Raphael rationalizes, his brain still trying to think of ways to avoid getting in trouble for this. But screw Leo, they can help you out with your martial arts after all the kindness you’ve shown them.

You don’t mind having to keep your eyes closed. You’ve been picking up on this secrecy thing like a giant flag being waved in front of your face. When Raph and Mikey finally give you permission to look, you are in awe of their dwelling.

“Other than the lack of windows,” you say, “do you know how many boys would be jealous of this place? Fuck it, I’m jealous of this place.”

“It’s alright,” Mikey shrugs, taking the first slice of pizza out of the box he picked up on the way back. “If you like being stuck underground your whole life.”

“Aw, you do better than lots of humans do for themselves, Mikey.” You try to cheer him up. “You live off the grid here, you have lots of space; cool, refurbished arcade games and-” You suddenly gasp as you see the plethora of weapons they have in a room behind Donnie’s office area. “You guys have weapons I haven’t even gotten to learn yet! Can I play with the toys?” You whine like a child in a toy store.

“Maybe later, Kill Bill.” Raph chuckles. “Right now, there’s someone I want you to meet.” He pushes you towards another direction in their lair. Before he can get you much further, you dig your heels in and whirl around to face him.

“Whoa whoa whoa. Time out.” You put your hands up in the universal signal. “It is one thing to run into a mutant turtle and then find out he has three brothers. I think I need to prepare for this first. Who am I meeting exactly? Your sister? Your pet crocodile? I mean if you guys live down here, does that mean the crocodiles are true, too?”

Raph chortles again. “Nah, good guess though. And it’s alligators,” he corrects. “Mikey’s pet alligator sleeps at night, though, so he’s not much fun.” You make a distressed noise and Raphael shakes his head to indicate he’s joking. “I’m going to introduce you to our dad. He raised us and taught us everything we know. I just…” The turtle suddenly seems hesitant. “I think he can help you with your sparring.”

“Oh.” You’re silent for a minute as an image pops into your head of Master Oogway. “Alright,” you consent.

“Finally.” Raph rolls his eyes and starts pushing you again.

You notice the bonsai trees first and wonder which turtle could be into bonsai before you see who’s working on them. When you finally see the figure, you let out a colorful string of curses, ending with exclaiming Raph’s name. The red masked turtle can’t contain it any longer and bursts out laughing.

“After I just explained to you about preparing me, you couldn’t explain better than ‘he’s my dad’?” You screech at him.

“I could but what’s the fun in that?” He asks and promptly gets whacked in the head with a tail. He yelps in pain, rubbing the sore spot. “Aw, come on, it was funny! At least I didn’t have her charge at you like Casey!”

“Just because you grew up with a giant rat for a father doesn’t mean everyone else is so accepting of the sight,” Splinter lectures. “I am so sorry about him,” he says to you. “I hope he didn’t drag you down here against your will, as well.”

“I’m afraid I came willingly.” You have your hand over your heart as if you can will it to stop racing in your chest, glaring at Raph. The red masked turtle is still sniggering while rubbing his sore head, proving that the prank was worth the pain to him. “But I should know better; if I’m going to spend time with mutant turtles, I shouldn’t expect normal.”

“I suppose that’s a good way to look at it,” Splinter chuckles, walking out into the main living area.

“I mean, I’m sorry about my reaction,” you explain as he walks past. “I don’t have a thing with rats. Now if you had been a giant scorpion or spider, or even a cockroach, then there would have been a problem.”

“Can’t say I fancy being any of those things, either, if I’d had the choice,” Splinter jokes. “I am what I am now and I have come to terms with that.” He turns around to face you. “Now, I believe I heard Raphael mention something about sparring?” His ears twitch as if to explain exactly how he heard that.

“Oh. Yeah.” All your feelings from earlier in the evening come back to the surface and your mood dives again. You look down at the floor, rubbing your arms as the bruises remind you of the mild pain you’re in. “I don’t like sparring and I’m not very good at it.” You hold your arms out to show the bruises that have darkened a bit more since you last showed Mikey and Raph.

Splinter hums in thought, rubbing his little chin puff goatee. “Maybe if you aren’t comfortable with sparring…is there something you are comfortable with doing for now?”

“Push hands,” you answer immediately.

Splinter raises an eyebrow.

“It can also be known as sticky hands?” You try again at his confusion.

“Why don’t you show me?” Splinter gestures towards a training corner.

A few minutes later, you’ve explained and shown the basics of this slow motion form of sparring to Splinter and Raph and Mikey sit around watching, like they are toddlers all over again. Your and Splinter’s wrists are touching as your fingers point upwards. You both rock back and forth on your feet and with your hips as each of you tries to get in slow hits with hands or elbows.

“She has a great basis,” Splinter comments as you two move like dancers. “I think we could learn just as much from her as she can from us.”

“I knew it,” Raph brags, puffing up a bit, acting as if he’s the one who discovered you like some kind of talent agent. Mikey glares at the back of Raph’s red bandana, since _he’s_ the one who hangs out with you the most. You haven’t hit _Mikey_ accidentally. The turtles are self-taught, but you have been formally taught. Splinter and Raphael’s compliments make your confidence grow a little after the awful evening you’ve had.

Once you’re done doing push hands with Splinter, Raph drags you around the lair again. He places you in front of a heavy bag. “Alright, girly. What you need now is a good old rage vent.” He pushes at the heavy bag, making it swing slightly.

“I don’t know, Raph,” you say, unsure of the boys being around. You’ve never had an audience before and you flashback to being around guys bigger and more intimidating than yourself in a gym and wanting to do more masculine workouts so you don’t do those workouts. You place your hand on the bag to still its movement. “Push hands calmed me down; I think I’m alright now.”

“Not even if you imagine those guys in your class who beat you up?” He prods. Something changes in your demeanor and you eye the heavy bag like it’s someone trying to steal from your purse all over again.

“Nooo?” You say with inflection, trying not to let his goading work.

Mikey has lived with Raph long enough to know that anger, even bottled and covered, can still bubble under the surface like magma and that it’s better to get it out now rather than later. He pulls on his brother’s shoulder and puts his hand up to whisper something in Raphael’s ear.

Raph gives him a serious look for a moment before he turns back to you, trying to look nonchalant.

“Not even if the heavy bag were say...your mom?”

Raph swears in that moment your eyes turned red. Mentioning your mother is what makes the volcano inside you finally burst and in a flash you’re attacking the heavy bag.

Raphael’s eyes widen; he hadn’t expected such a sudden and violent reaction. Even Mikey is shocked by the anger he is witnessing. How can someone’s own parent cause so much anger? The boys move away, not wanting to get anywhere near your flailing limbs.

It takes only a few minutes for you to burn out. Punching a heavy bag for even a short amount of time is a difficult workout. Soon the brothers stop hearing the sound of dull thuds and only hear your heavy breathing. You catch your breath as you go join them on the couch. Mikey slides a piece of pizza on a paper plate over to you and you are grateful for the gesture and the carbs, as well as a glass of water.

“So uh…” Mikey doesn’t know how to broach this subject. “Your mom is your hot button? What’s up with that?”

You chug some water and take a few slow bites of pizza as you think about how to answer his question, or if you want to answer it at all. This is just a hard and touchy subject. But Michelangelo has proven his loyalty to you time and again. Even though Raphael can be gruff, you get a sense that he’s watching out for you, too. And Splinter just helped you out with sparring when your confidence was low. So you trust everyone in the room, even though you don’t know where Splinter got to.

“My mom is just…someone who probably should never have become a parent. I never had a dad; I think I resulted from a stupid decision or something. She was controlling to the point of abusive and it took me years to realize how bad she was. My whole life I tried to work and save anything I could so I could move away from her. I’d made all the arrangements to move here right when all that...that alien nonsense went down,” you wave your hand around, indicating the sky that’s above the concrete. “She totally flipped out when I told her I was moving here and she tried to sabotage me from leaving. Now she only calls to try and guilt me to move back.” You shrug as if you’re shrugging away the sadness, no big deal.

“That’s...that’s awful,” Mikey exhales, his own pizza forgotten. He’d often dreamed of what it’d be like to have a normal family, a mom and dad with his four brothers. How could one imagine life without his brothers, even if they don’t always get along? Through the years he never doubted Splinter and his brothers’ love, or his love for them. Mikey’s world just shifted, learning that not all human families were nuclear or happy.

Raphael is silent after your story as he realizes that you are what true loneliness looks like. No family you were proud to call your own, no friends save for four mutated turtles. A few years ago, he’d talked a big game about leaving his family because what could he contribute to their group other than brute strength? He may butt heads with them more often that he’d like, but a life without them would be miserable. Raph’s arm twitches, wanting to reach out and comfort you and tell you it’ll be okay because you’ll never be alone again as long as they’re around. “I…” he starts, but what can he say? What can he or Mikey say? How terrible that is? That he knows how you feel? Feelings??

“Raph? Mikey?” Leo’s voice calls out into the dwelling and echoes off the walls.

“Honey, I’m home!” Donnie jokes as they come bounding into the lair. Both vigilante turtles stop dead when they lay eyes on you. You. In their home.

“Mikey, what did you do? What happened?” Leo accuses. He didn’t sense the tension in the room, but their arrival has erased all of it in an instant. All Leo cares about is that there better be a good reason for the new girl to be here in their Bat Cave.

The orange masked turtle is quick to point fingers. “Raph did it; it was all his idea.”

“Hey!” Raph’s head whips around to glare at Mikey and he shoves his little brother’s arm. “I thought you had my back on this!”

“No way, bro! I am not taking the fall with you on this one. Maybe next time, though!” Mikey quickly jumps out of Raph’s reach before he can hit him, or worse.

“That’s enough.” Splinter orders, tapping his short staff on the ground. The turtles all freeze, even you. Until you realize you’re not the one in trouble, so you relax and even smile to yourself.

“I am glad Raphael and Michelangelo brought her here.” Raph laughs victoriously at Leo and Splinter waves his short stick at him to silence him. “We could all learn a lot from her, and she from us. I will allow her to return here whenever she wishes.”

“But sensei-” Leo starts to argue.

“It will be fine,” Splinter assuages Leonardo’s fears.  “You need to learn you cannot control every little thing, Leonardo.”

The blue masked turtle eyes you. It was one thing to let April into their little family. April was like a sister to them. It had been even harder to let in Vern and Casey. His family’s safety could be at stake. He’ll trust anybody April says they can trust, but…a random girl?

“Bro.” Mikey walks over and places a hand on Leo’s shoulder, turning him away from the others. He can empathize where Leo’s fears are coming from, so he’ll explain. “Listen. She has nobody.”

“Nobody? What do you mean nobody?” Leonardo doesn’t understand how a human can have no one else in their life. Not even a boyfriend or a mom and dad? A girl like her doesn’t have many friends?

“ _Nobody_ , bro. No family. No friends nearby. So, if you’re worried about our secret…who is she going to tell? We’re the only friends she has here.”

Leo closes his eyes, two forces warring inside him. He always worries about his family’s secrecy and safety, but if Splinter says he approves and Mikey vouches for her…

“Fine,” he agrees. “She can have the same rules for visiting that she has for us.”

Mikey laughs, running over to you and swinging you up into a hug. “He said you can stop by whenever you want!”

“That’s not what I-” Splinter’s last words to him echo in his mind and he shuts his mouth. He waves his hand in dismissal and leaves you and his brothers to your shenanigans as the rest of his brothers gather around you, happy to have you part of their little circle.


	5. Hands part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You have a physical ailment

With Leo and Splinter’s approval, you actually learn how to get to their lair at any time. You only learn one way to get in, the way that’s closest to your apartment building. For safety, they keep other exits hidden. Now it’s almost an even split on Mikey and Raph coming to visit you and you going down below to train with them.

A few weeks after you were first there, you head down to see who’s at home to help you with a problem. The only one you find is Raphael. The red masked turtle is in front of the TV, watching an MMA fight. Since you don’t see any of the other turtles around, with a wicked grin, you step quietly to scare him from behind.

“Boo!” You exclaim, ghosting a touch over his shoulders.

Raphael lets out an uncharacteristic yelp and swings around. You expected it, sneaking up on a ninja, and move back to avoid the hit, chuckling.

“Jeez, girlie!” Raph breaths hard, closing his eyes. “I could have hit you!” He scolds.

“Yeah, sure,” you remark sarcastically, still smiling. This is your revenge for the Master Splinter joke and the both of you know it. Raph tries to calm his nerves after your dumb scare and turns back to his broadcasted fight. You two watch the screen for a few moments, but MMA isn’t really your cup of tea.

“Soooo are you the only one here?” ‘Other than Splinter’ is unspoken, since you know by now he pretty much never leaves the lair, but always hides around.

“Yeah,” Raph answers without turning to look at you, eyes still fixed on the screen. “Mikey left to go pick up some pizzas and Leo and Donnie are out patrolling.”

“Already?” You make a face at Mikey getting pizzas, though. How often do these guys eat pizza anyways? Do they even know how to eat healthy? Now that you think about it, can turtles even digest cheese? You decide you’re not going to think too hard about it, reaching around your side to massage at something on your back.

“Why?” Raphael turns around now that the round is over. “Did you want to train with someone or something?”

“Not exactly. I actually need a huge favor.”

“Oh yeah?” Raph turns fully, folding his arms over the couch back. He grins at you like he’s planning something evil. “And what’s that?”

You’re suddenly embarrassed and purse your lips, looking down. You suddenly question if this was a good idea. But what choice do you have? To gain some courage, you inhale deeply before just blurting it out to get it over with.

“I have about five knots in my back and I haven’t been able to find a new masseuse so I was wondering if one of you would be able to give me a massage.”

The toothpick that drives you a little nuts for safety reasons droops in Raphael’s mouth, followed by his jaw. He blinks, as if that’s what is making him hear weird things come out of your mouth.

“What?”

You roll your eyes, trying not to feel any weirder about this than you already do. “You heard me, Raphael. I have a dozen knots in my back and since you’re the only one here, can you help massage them out?”

“I thought you said you had five,” he corrects.

“So you were listening.”

Busted. “I guess I can try?” The red masked turtle volunteers. “But I’m not a personal masseuse or anything. Are you sure I won’t hurt you? Or can you wait for Donnie to get back, he might know more about human anatomy than I do-” he stalls. _His_ hands…on _you_? His _meaty_ , green, _six_ fingers? Suddenly this doesn’t sound like such a good idea to him. Of course, if his hands don’t make him feel horribly self-conscious about touching a human, in what way would Donnie be better?

You’ve already come around the couch as he rambles and sit down beside him. “It’ll be fine. It’s not rocket surgery.” You turn your back to him and reach around, pointing to a random spot on your back just below your shoulder blade. “Here. Feel right here.”

Suddenly, the idea of touching you has Raphael nervous. Sure, you two have bumped arms and play fought at your place, but this is on some new level. His hesitation has you turning your head to look at him. “Raph, it’s fine. Really,” you encourage. “Just feel the muscle right there.”

Slowly, Raph reaches down to your fragile human body and places only his thumb on the spot you pointed to.

“Do you feel the knot?” You ask.

He rolls his thumb around and sure enough, it feels like there’s a small lump under your skin.

“Yeah.” He marvels at the human body. Is that really muscle that has somehow tied itself in a knot inside you? Don’t judge him, Donnie’s the science expert, including but not limited to biology of more than just turtles.

“So what you have to do,” you chuckle nervously, knowing what’s coming next, “is push hard at it,” you hold up your own thumb and mime the actions as you say them, “and rub it out until you can’t feel that bump anymore.”

“Okay?” The red masked turtle sounds unsure. What is _your_ exact definition of “push hard” versus his? Is he going to do more harm than good here?

“Are you sure you don’t want to just find a doctor or human masseuse for this?” Raphael asks.

“Raph, I’m not going to get better any time soon if you keep talking. I can’t reach the spots myself; I tried. Please, Raph, I just really need help on this and you’re it. I promise you can’t break me or anything. I’m tougher than I look.”

The turtle chuckles. “You’ve sure proven that again and again.” Raphael tries to psyche himself up. _Come on, Raph. You can do this. She’s not poisonous._ You’re _not poisonous. She didn’t flinch away at your touch. She’s in pain and needs your help. She’s not a fragile, porcelain doll. You got this. It’s fine._

Raphael applies pressure and rubs a circular pattern only a couple of times before you’re burying your face in your hands and stringing a sentence of colorful curses together. Raph immediately jerks his hand away as if he’s burned you.

“It’s fine, Raph. I knew it was going to hurt like a bitch. I can deal with the pain.” You turn slightly to look at him out of the corner of your eye with a challenging tone. “Can you?”

Raph squints at you and has to resist the urge to just push down on your wounded muscle in petty revenge. He starts again and you let out more curses, hissing and clenching your teeth in pain. Working out a knot is painful work for the recipient.

“It’s like getting a tattoo,” you whine, rubbing your face.

“You have a tattoo? Where?” Raph asks, working on another knot you pointed out. He hasn’t seen any sign of this alleged tattoo.

“You’re pretty much fondling it.”

“What is it?”

“That’s for me to know and you find out,” you say childishly. “OW!” You turn your head to glare at him.

“Sorry.” Raph chuckles.

“No, you’re not, you jerk, you did that on purpose.”

“Sit still so I can work out the rest of these knots,” the turtle orders, pushing hard on one again as if to say, “or else.”

You drop the subject as you hiss in pain, returning to burying your face in your hands to ride out the rest of this painful predicament.

Raphael continues kneading out the rest of the knots you pointed out. Your hisses and exclamations of pain scare him less and less as he accepts that he’s going to hurt you. But he doesn’t seem to be damaging you and that’s all that matters to him. He thinks how any of his brothers should be doing this instead. He still thinks Donnie would know more about this, or how you’d probably trust Mikey more.

He’s so lost in his thoughts, he barely notices his work contributing to the knots disappearance. The simple act is almost meditative for him. He liked creating things as a younger turtle, and when he’d hit puberty and the anger had crashed over him like a tsunami, Splinter had found other ways for Raphael to create that kept his hands busy and allowed his mind to rest and wander. His brothers could easily sit still and meditate-yes, even Mikey-but Raph needed to move, needed to be doing something else, _anything else_ productive at the same time. Something like knitting. And now apparently giving you a back massage.

Finally, when you feel all the knots have been worked out, with a sigh of relief you lean against Raph, breathing heavily. Like getting your tattoo, you held your breath often through the pain. Now you try and regain your breath, as if you just went for a long run. Raph’s eyes widen in surprise and he freezes. His heart suddenly races at you being this close to him and he’s sure you’re going to feel it through his plastron. He keeps his hands clenched and far away from you, as if _now_ his hands being anywhere near you could be a problem.

Raph feels something shift in his world; this is different than all those play fights over your PS3 controllers or slices of pizza at your apartment. He doesn’t know what to do with this situation. Should he put his hands on your shoulders? Your waist? Drop them to his sides? _What should he do?_

He doesn’t have to sit there in frozen uncertainty for long, because the sound of Mikey’s approaching jet board echoes off the walls of the lair. Raph actually flinches as he freezes a second time, his nerves jumping under his skin at the idea of Mikey finding you two like this.

But you seem to have caught your breath and you calmly sit up as if you two weren’t in any kind of compromising position and Raph can’t tell if you’re chill about what just happened or you’re better at stealth than he is.

“Who wants pizza?” Mikey calls out. He finds you and Raph in front of the TV. “Hey, Tigress! You know, I had a feeling I’d find you here, so I took the liberty of bringing you some of your favorite pizza, too.”

“Aw, thanks, Mikey!” You praise. You get up and head over to their little kitchen area. Internally, you’re kind of sick of pizza, but you aren’t going to say no to free food. Raph seems to have short circuited on the couch.

“Hey, Raph, you going to eat this pizza? Oh, who won the fight?” Mikey asks as he piles up slices to stuff in his mouth. Hopefully Raph will fill him in on all the gory details while he fuels up.

Raph’s brows furrow as he realizes he didn’t pay attention to the fight at all. He’d been so focused on you he hadn’t even heard the commentary or noticed the flickering screen. “Uh…”

“Oh! That one dude who punches really well won.” You save Raph as you take a bite of your own slice of pizza.

“Oh yeah?” Mikey plays along with your joke. “Did you happen to catch his _name_?”

“Punchy McKickface,” you snark back.

Raphael watches the two of you joke as you try to distract Mikey from the fact that he didn’t pay attention to the fight. If Mikey were to have time to think about it, he’d find it strange that Raphael wasn’t eager to give Mikey a play by play of the match. Raph marvels at you and your ability to act like the last few minutes didn’t even happen. Although as Mikey’s hands flail about, slinging cheese and sauce around him, as he tells you a story about how he was almost spotted getting his pizza so he’d had to take a long route home, Raph sees your eyes dart to him and you give him a small smile. Finally, he snaps out of his meditative trance and heads over to sit with you two and eat some pizza before Mikey vacuums it all up and maybe protect you from any flying debris.


	6. Hands part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little fun sparring with the turts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say that the boys DO know your name, but I'm trying to avoid using "y/n" like the plague, so you get cute nicknames instead. Mikey typically calls you "gurl" or "Tigress." Raph feeds off that by calling you "girlie" and "princess," obviously, to annoy you. Leo's polite "miss" devolved to "missy." I haven't really come up with anything unique from Donnie, he pretty much just calls you what his brothers call you, or just your name, but you still won't see a "y/n" from me.

The more time you spend with the turtles, the more you learn from them. They introduce you to free running and despite your frequent runs, your endurance and muscles are not prepared for the new workout and you’re gasping for breath after just half an hour and feeling sore days after, even with your protein regime. The more often you do it with them, though, the more your endurance grows. It even develops a trust fall system, where you’re often boosted in a jump or thrown to another brother due to your small, human size. You start to feel like a real life Kim Possible or that you could try out for American Ninja Warrior and make it look like a cakewalk.

The most fun thing is to spar with them. It’s more enjoyable, educational, and surprisingly relaxing than sparring in your martial arts class not only because you trust them not to hurt you and have more control than any black belt, but also because you spar with weapons. Thankfully, you haven’t sparred hand-to-hand in your martial arts in a while, but you aren’t at the level to spar with weapons in class yet.

One of the forms you show the turtles is tai chi and Leo takes to it like a turtle to water, especially pakua circle walking. Raph ridicules you two for moving slowly. “If you can’t do something slowly, you can’t do it fast,” you say, not even distracted from your movements. “Could you slow down one of your basic attacks to explain it to me?” You sass as you and Leo keep moving in sync. The red turtle just glares silently before turning and walking away, muttering under his breath.

One day you come down to train with them, only to find your pakua circle being used by the boys as a sort of sumo ring. _Who knew that pakua circles could be so versatile?_ You think, amused, as Leo and Mikey push against each other’s shoulders, trying to be the first to push the other brother outside of the circle of tape, egged on by Raph and Donnie. Finally, Leo gets the upper hand and forces Mikey out of the ring to the disappointing groans of Mikey and Raph. Leo and Donnie high five (wait, high three?), then Donnie shows he’s not playing favorites and pats Mikey on the shoulder.

“What are you guys doing?” You ask.

Mikey’s face is the first to brighten as four pairs of eyes look up at you. They hadn’t even heard you come down. What ninja skills were you hiding from them?

“Tigress! You’re just in time!” Mikey exclaims.

“Fooor what?” You ask slowly, taking a step back, preparing to leave as soon as you arrived. You don’t like where Mikey’s train of thought could be going after what you just watched.

“Come on!” Mikey pushes you into the pakua circle, parting his three brothers. “Let’s see who _she_ can take out!” Mikey declares.

“What?” Four disbelieving voices ask as four pairs of eyes fix on Mikey.

“She’s been training with us. She’s improved a lot and she’s got a lot of skills.” The compliments flow from his mouth. “I bet she could take out at least half of us.”

“Mikey,” you warn. Half is still not a good ratio to you, especially when the subject is “How Many Ninja Turtles Can You Fight?” To spar in slow motion with them is one thing to but actually wrestle and fight them? It is a bad idea, especially to go against friends that are three times your size.

“What’s the matter? _Scared_ , princess?” Raph taunts, leaning down to be face level with you.

Raph knows just what buttons to push with you. Your eyes narrow and you lean closer, glaring into his honey eyes. “Bring it on, turtle.”

What have you just done?

Since you are a tiny human, some different rules are established. ~~The first rule is you don’t talk about Fight Club.~~ The turtles can’t manhandle or throw you out of the ring; only being pushed out of the circle is allowed.

Mikey goes against you first. You still don’t think this is a good idea, but you have to eat your words now. Both of your fingers wrap together; your thumb above his and your last two fingers outside of his third finger. Any other time, Mikey would be in awe that he was holding hands with a girl, but he’s more excited to be sparring and see what you can do.

When Donnie starts the match, Mikey pretty much throws it to make you feel confident. He goes down with barely any push from you and really hams it up when he leaves the circle, leaving you staring at his brothers in deadpan disbelief and they just shrug back at you. Deep down, the gesture does make you feel better.

But your confidence plunges with the remaining line up of brothers. It doesn’t really surprise you that Mikey would throw a victory for your sake, but the other brothers might not be so forgiving. The small joy from Mikey’s defeat is short lived as your fear of sparring starts to grow in your gut all over again.

But you go against Mikey a few more times until it all becomes fun and games and you’re all laughing at Mikey’s and your antics. A couple times he gets more serious and actually makes you work for your victory, but he makes sure you win every time.

You go against Donnie and the two of you are nervous; you for changing partners and he’s scared of hurting you in any way that you both end up collapsing into the circle laughing, with no clear victor. The three brothers confer and decide that it is a forfeit by both of you.

Then Leo wants a turn against you and you analyze him. Could he be nice like Mikey and give you an easy victory? That doesn’t seem like something the blue turtle would do, but everyone’s moods are light today, so who could really say? Will Leo sacrifice a victory, or will his personal honor code not allow him to do that, even for fake sparring?

You lace your fingers together and Raph signals the beginning of the match. It ends up that Leo simply can’t _let_ you win, but you can’t say you didn’t try your best. You accept the fairness of the loss as Mikey comforts and encourages you.

“Enough of this.” Raph pushes Leo aside and steps into the circle, thumbing his nose. “My turn.”

Yep. Thanks Raph. There’s the fear of sparring, rearing its ugly head. Your eyes travel up his form and you purse your lips so hard they disappear. It’s next to impossible to notice that Raphael is the biggest of his brothers, or that he’s always wearing extra weighted items. You once saw the weight Raph can bench press and nearly had a heart attack. That pole was nearly bending in half, and that was _his normal workout?_ Most of the time Raph is a gentle giant, but now you have to spar against him? Even for fun? You’d rather walk out into Times Square traffic.

“You can take him. You’re a Tigress,” Mikey whispers to you, gently pushing you into the circle.

“Scared of me, princess?” Raph holds his hands out, giving you a wicked grin.

Yes. Terrified. Because you’ve seen what power he has, even on a bad day. But Raph wouldn’t really hurt you, would he? You close your eyes, inhaling deeply. Internally, you push your fear down deep into your gut. When it’s locked away, you open your eyes and calmly step up to Raph, sliding your fingers in between his.

Mikey looks between you two before timidly announcing the start of the match. The orange turtle’s just as wary as you are. He knows Raph’s strength all too well and he’s afraid Raph might end up hurting you accidentally and it will be his fault for starting this stupid sparring game in the first place.

You push with all your might against the turtle, but it just isn’t enough; you feel your feet moving back against the cement and it takes all your focus just to keep from toppling under Raph’s strength. You try not to think about how he’s barely even trying.

“Just give up, princess,” Raph banters. “I’m just too much for you to handle.”

The “princess” nickname is starting to drive you mad. “I’m not a princess, I’m a goddamn queen,” you’d like to snark, but it takes all your focus not give under Raph’s grip. All the brothers are rooting for you and that makes you feel a little better that the boys are cheering you on, despite the obvious mismatch.

You bow your head to look down at your feet and see you’re almost at the edge of the circle. Then you notice something else and it gives you an idea. You look back up at him with a new fire in your eyes and Raph wonders what you’re thinking.

“You know, Raph,” you manage to grunt out. “It’s never about the size of your opponent…” You turn your hips, put all of your weight onto your back leg, and as quick as you can you sweep Raph’s confident but terribly spread stance out from under him. Once he’s off-balance, it takes almost no effort to throw his weight out of the circle.

“But how you use his size against him,” you finish, standing victoriously over him.

There’s a few moments of awed silence as the brothers all stare at you, including Raph, once he sits up.

You actually won.

They all saw that Raph wasn’t going to go easy on you, but you found a weak spot, took advantage of it, and won. _All on your own._

Mikey moves first and, laughing, he swings you up.

“I told you, you could do it! I told you were a Tigress!”

You laugh and hug him. Truly, you are just as amazed as they are as Leo and Donnie gather around you to congratulate you and give you victory slaps on the shoulder. Raph’s ego is a little bruised, but less than when you accidentally hit him with your guandao. Deep down, he’s just as proud of your fairly earned victory.

“What is going on in here?” A voice asks.

“A beat down, that’s what!” You respond. Your added victory of the one moment with the perfect zinger at the right time is lost when you realize that it wasn’t Splinter’s voice, but some unknown and feminine voice.

“Hey, April…” Mikey trails off awkwardly, slowly setting you down.

Before now, you and April haven’t crossed paths, but the boys have explained their past exploits, including their other human friends. There’s a guy with April and you wonder if it’s Vern or Casey.

“Did you see that?” The guy is also in disbelief, hands up at the side of his head. “She took out Raphael! Hey Raph, you didn’t let her win, did you?”

Raph stands and brushes himself off, wiping his lip like he got punched. “Ch. I could say ‘yes,’ but I’d be lying.” He’s uncomfortable with the attention now. It’s one thing to lose to you in private, in front of his brothers. He didn’t know he had an audience. His ego takes another blow.

“I don’t know who this girl is,” Casey says. “But if she can take out Raph, I want to be on her side.”

Then it’s up to you to introduce yourself to April and Casey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My urge to write for this comes and goes, but never fear: I have many chapter ideas written down. So this fic will be updated for a while to come, just not on any kind of schedule.


	7. Anger part 2/Moonlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Your bed’s big enough. We could just…share it?” he asks.  
> Did someone say bed sharing? Oh, it was me? Ah. Well then >D

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize that it's been a while since I last updated. It's almost been a month. You would not believe how often I did not feel like writing or I was writing other things. I've been working on about three different chapters of this at the same time and didn't know what order I wanted to put them in. But I am so excited about the next upcoming chapters that you get this bonding one.

One night you head down to the lair for some partner training. The only turtle you find is Donnie, who’s monitoring them while they’re out on patrol. Luckily Donnie’s job isn’t obligatory and you can pull him away from his work station for a little bo staff sparring.

The bo staff is considered the grandfather of all weapons and it’s one of your favorites: it gives you good reach on an opponent and it has some fun forms. You enjoy your rattan staff more than Donnie’s staff. You can’t deny his is extreme and it’s impressive how he MacGuyver’d a retractable staff, but of all the turtles’ weapons, you never play with his; you don’t trust yourself with a weapon that has electricity flowing through it.

After some sparring, you hang around the lair, hoping you can spend time with the others when they return. You play on your tablet, piggybacking off of Donnie’s wifi to play games and scroll through social media.

As you’re absentmindedly scrolling, something occurs to you and you sit up.

“Hey Donnie?”

“Yeah?”

“Leo’s named after da Vinci, isn’t he?” you call across the lair.

“Yeah. We’re all Renaissance artists. Why?”

“Has anyone brought up the fact that you’re the genius, but Leo’s named after the inventor?”

You hear him chuckle. “Well, no one’s brought it up, but the irony occurs to me every once in a while.”

You nod sagely to yourself. “I wondered…” And you go back to your internet exploring.

Suddenly, you get a feeling that the others are returning. Like sensing an approaching thunderstorm, goose bumps erupt on your body and there’s a crackling energy in the air.

Then you hear the yelling echoing off the walls.

Mikey slips in pretty much unseen and slinks over to Donnie. He’d had to listen to them fighting all evening. It was the same old thing they always fought about, but it had been a good while since they’d had the leadership-orders-anarchy argument.

You don’t fault Mikey for hiding. The yelling has you wishing you could melt into the couch; whether that’s from not wanting to listen or feeling bad that you’re overhearing all this and they don’t know you’re here is unclear to you.

It starts to get more heated between Leo and Raph and Mikey moves to go fetch Master Splinter to calm them down when you decide take matters into your own hands.

“That’s enough!” You stand, glaring at them.

The turtles jolt, staring at you wide-eyed. They hadn’t been expecting you to be the one yelling; normally Master Splinter yells at them to stop. The two had been arguing so fervently, they hadn’t noticed you at all.

You pinch the bridge of your nose as they continue to stare at you. None of them have heard you yell so loud before.

“Raph. I can’t think of a delicate way to say this.” You pause. “From one angry person to another, I’m going to tell you: this isn’t the fight you want to be fighting. I know you want to win the war, but this is not the battle for that.” You give him a hard but understanding stare. He narrows his own yellow ones at you as if you’ve betrayed him before he throws his hands up and storms off, probably to vent his anger into his heavy bag.

You purse your lips, eyebrows upturned in regret that you had to tell him that.

“Hey. Thanks,” Leo says. “I thought I’d never get him under control.”

Anger flashes through your eyes when you turn to glare at him and Leo’s suddenly worried he’ll have to deal with two angry people tonight.

“I never said you were right, Leo,” you hiss at him. Leo’s brows furrow in confusion and you shake your head in disbelief.

“You know, Leonardo, I’ve had leaders like you before: bosses who think they know everything and won’t listen to input from anyone because they think they’re always right. I _hate_ people like that. I’ve seen you guys do _incredible_ things. You have amazing teamwork when you don’t even think about it. But you have _got_ to let go of this illusion of control, especially with Raph’s personality. _You don’t know everything, Leo._ And maybe you’d learn a lot more if you _really listened_ to your brothers more often.”

Leo is silent as he takes in the lecture, arms crossed in front of him. You make a lot of points that Master Splinter has been trying to tell him for years. Splinter’s manner was a lot more gentle. Unfortunately for Leo, there’s no gentle setting with you. All the blue-masked turtle does is give you a hardened look before he, too, disappears into the lair.

You sigh loudly and flop back onto the couch. Well that was awful. You didn’t want to unleash like that and it seemed like the only way to get them to stop yelling. Leo’s comment about controlling Raph had raised your hackles and you felt the need to come to his defense, especially since he wasn’t here to defend himself.

The storm has passed, but you still feel the tension in the lair. You keep hoping maybe Mikey will come out of wherever he’s hiding, but after a while he’s still not anywhere to be seen. So much for hanging out with the turtles tonight.

You turn off your tablet and put it into your bag, slinging it onto your shoulder as you head over to Raph’s workout area. The turtle is still going hard at the bag, despite the time that’s passed. You try to wait for him to pause for breath or a drink or something but he just keeps going like the damn Energizer bunny. Eventually you clear your throat to get his attention.

He stops wailing on the poor bag finally, but doesn’t look in your direction. He knows who it is. He places one fist on the bag to steady it, breathing heavily.

“What do you want?” he pants. It doesn’t sound threatening; just tired.

“Well, uh. It’s kind of really late.” Like, after midnight, but that’s what happens when you have ninjas for friends. “And I was wondering if you could escort me home.” You pause. “You know, just in case.” You both know you can defend yourself, but a buddy system is better at night in the Big Apple.

All the turtle wants to do is beat the heavy bag until Leo’s arrogant face disappears from his mind and he finally gets exhausted enough to pass out. “Can’t someone else do it?” he asks.

“Um,” you scratch your head. “Donnie’s under the truck, Leo’s meditating, and Mikey…has straight up disappeared on me.”

Raph sighs heavily. “Yeah. He does that sometimes. Doesn’t like me and Leo fighting, so if he can’t run to Donnie or Splinter, he just stays away until he thinks the worst is over.”

“Besides, I think you could use some…” you wave your hand around, indicating the tension that fills the lair “…fresh air.”

He’s silent for a moment, shoulders heaving as he breathes hard after his workout.

“Yeah, I guess I could escort you home,” he stammers slowly between breaths.

“What a gentleman,” you coo teasingly as you turn and head for the exit, expecting him to follow.

You were right. Raphael felt like he _could_ breathe better outside. The night air cools his heated skin and helps clear his mind of the anger. He isn’t often aware of the stifling environment he creates when he fights with Leo. No wonder Mikey leaves when it becomes too much even for him.

But he still seems distracted when you get to your apartment. He doesn’t even go for your game system or food. He just flops down heavily onto your couch.

“If it makes you feel better, I did give Leo a stern talking to.”

He merely grunts in acknowledgement. Splinter’s been doing that for years and it doesn’t seem to get through Leo’s thick skull. Do you want a gold star?

You sigh. “I’m sorry, Raph. I feel bad for yelling like that-”

He shakes his head in disagreement. “You were right. I don’t always pick the best battles. But Leo just gets under my skin, thinking he knows best all the time-”

“I can empathize, Raph. And trust me, he doesn’t. I told him as much.”

“You did?” That’s what gets Raph’s attention. First you beat him fair and square and then you tell Leo off? Maybe he should start calling you Wonder Woman.

You see the new look of respect in Raph’s honey eyes and you reach out and gently push his knee. “I have an idea,” you say suddenly. “Why don’t you take a shower?”

“Are you saying I stink?”

You purse your lips to keep your sass contained before thinking of a nicer response. “Not necessarily. I just find a hot shower helps me relax and clear my head.” You pause and wonder how well this joke will go over. “And you _were_ working out pretty hard. So yes, you stink.” He grabs one of your couch pillows, and hits you with it.

“And just when I was thinking you were a gentleman. Here.” You move the pillow away and help him start taking off some of his gear. You start with the one weighted glove and you can’t help but shake your head.

“One weight glove? Really, Raphie?”

Raphie?

He clears his throat, shrugging. “Yeah, well…my left hand is less dominant; gotta make up for that.”

You just shake your head again, moving on to his right arm’s pads. “Weirdo,” you lightly tease.

He removes his gear belts and buckles and you leave him to deal with anything below the waist, but not before giving him more grief for wearing an actual martial art white belt. He sends Mikey a quick message to let at least one brother know where he is, so you don’t have another “grounding” on your hands. The last thing you help remove is his bandana. When you get your first glimpse of him without it, you can’t help but stop and stare.

His eyes look up and meet yours and he gives you a weird look.

“What? Do I have something on my face?”

You blink rapidly and shake your head to clear it. “No, no. I just… never knew there was a handsome turtle hiding under there.”

You quickly get up to move away from him, so he won’t see your panicked look at what you just blurted out. When you move away, you don’t see the same awed look on Raph’s face, either.

You expect him to move into the bathroom, so after waiting a few moments, you start taking off your own workout clothes. You barely get your arms out of your shirt when you hear a gasp behind you.

Your head whips around to see Raph hadn’t been in the bathroom yet. He hasn’t seen anything forbidden on you; you still have a sports bra on. But he has finally seen-

“That’s your tattoo?” He exclaims a little too loudly for the early morning hours. You glare at him to indicate that. You still have wall and floor neighbors to think about.

The turtle ignores the look, moving swiftly across the room. He grabs you by the shoulders to study the ink covering almost your entire back.

“What is it?” He asks, almost breathless. Tattoos hurt like crazy; every turtle except for Donnie has two by now and even though all their pain tolerances are high, they’re still painful to get. And they don’t even have the luxury of a nice, sterile tattoo parlor with modern equipment.

“Can’t you tell?” His silence tells you that no, he can’t. That’s almost fair; you couldn’t recognize his samurai helmet tattoo for weeks. “It’s gargoyle wings.” The wings cover your entire back, from the tops of your shoulders to roughly your last rib bones. They aren’t filled in all the way, because something that sized filled in would cost thousands of dollars, not to mention the hours it would take to fill them in and the pain and aftercare. You had them filigreed instead.

“Gargoyles...like that cartoon you love?”

“Yeah. It’s what started my love for New York City. And since I love the cartoon even now, I figured why not? Of course Gargoyles don’t exist, but I got to meet and befriend turtles instead.”

There’s a few moments of silence as Raph absorbs that, as well as looks at your intricate ink. He’s kind of jealous. He can’t put a tattoo on his shell; the most he can do is have one of his brothers paint something on. He’d get a back tattoo if he could. He’d probably tattoo his whole body like a yazuka if he could. But he can only tattoo his arms and legs. Humans are lucky they can tattoo any part of their body-

“Raph? Are you going to keep holding me while I’m half naked or are going to go into the bathroom?” You ask.

Raph feels his face heat up and he immediately releases you.

“Uh, yeah. Right. Bathroom. That. Shower.” He backs up a few steps before turning and going into the bathroom. This time you wait until the door is shut and you hear running water before you finish undressing so Raph really doesn’t see anything he shouldn’t.

Despite his size, your tub and shower head actually fit the giant turtle. And you were right again. The warm water does feel good and helps clear his mind more than the cool night outside. He stays under the stream for a while, enjoying the warm steam and the feel of the water cascading down his form. He grabs your generic soap bar and washes his skin; he may not get a large tattoo, but at least a majority of his form doesn’t sweat.

When he comes out of the bathroom, you’ve already redressed yourself in pajamas. You’re sitting on your bed, reading a digital book as you waited for Raph to leave the bathroom so you could brush your teeth.

Raph pokes around your apartment while you finish getting ready for bed. When you exit the bathroom looking ready to sleep, it suddenly occurs to the turtle how much he still does not want to go home.

“Can I stay here tonight?” he blurts out. He looks panicked, wishing he could take those words back. That was stupid, why did he say that, he can just stay out until sunrise and then avoid Leo until he’s calmer-

You just give him an understanding look. “Of course you can, Raphie. You’re always welcome to stay here anytime you want to.” You say it so gently that Raph feels something pull and flutter in his gut.

“You can have the bed,” you continue. “I can sleep on the couch.”

“Nah,” the turtle argues. “This is your place, it’s your bed. I can sleep on the couch.”

“No offense, Raph, but I don’t think you can fit on my couch lying down. Either your shell would hang over or take up so much space you’d fall to the floor and cause the whole building to think there’s an earthquake. You need more space, you’re the guest, I can sleep on the couch, please, just take my bed.”

“Your bed’s big enough. We could just…share it?” he asks.

You freeze, staring at him as if he’s gone mad.

“No. No no no no. Absolutely not. Bad idea,” you say.

“Why?” He’s confused, and a little hurt. Mikey told him all about your sleepover all those weeks ago. You didn’t mind sleeping beside _him_. “I bathed; I don’t stink.”

“It’s not that. It’s that I don’t share well.”

Raph narrows his eyes.

“You know, they make bed sharing seem like a cute thing, but it’s not.” The turtle wonders who “they” are, but you continue. “I had sleepovers with friends growing up and my friends always had bigger beds than me so we’d share. But if one person moves, the other wakes up. Some people hog beds and blankets. And TV makes a couple sharing look romantic, but trust me, it’s-” He sees that old pain flash across your face, the one that shows up when you talk about your past and that boyfriend you rarely mention. “It’s not.”

Every once in a while that pain shows up on your face and he wishes he could make it go away. His only solutions to problems like that are to punch them and he really wishes he could track this ex down and go beat him up.

“It just makes sense for us to share, though, right?” He asks. “Like you said, I can’t fit on your couch, but it is your bed. Just pretend it’s a sleepover like when you were little,” he tries. “I promise I don’t move much.”

“You just want someone to cuddle with, don’t you, Raphie?”

He starts to object, but then he glares at you. He recognizes what you’re doing; you’re making jokes to hide other feelings.

“Just get in the bed, girlie.”

You can say later that he didn’t deny the snuggling suggestion. You situate yourself under your covers, staying as close to the edge of your side as you can to give the turtle as much room as he needs. He seems to do the same thing for you while keeping as much shell as possible from hanging over.

You ask a question you’ve always wondered. “Can you sleep on a flat surface?”

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t recommend it long term. You’ve seen some of our chairs and beds? Sometimes a curved surface is nice, other times flat surfaces work just as well.”

You nod against the pillow in understanding. You see the space between you and Raph and are grateful you finally made the upgrade to a bigger bed not that long ago. It was supposed to be so you had lots of space to not share with anyone, but you suppose bipedal turtles can be an exception.

You weren’t lying to Raph when you said you didn’t share well; you just don’t sleep well knowing there’s someone beside you. There’s so much pressure in _sharing a bed_. When Mikey stayed over that one night, you had literally passed out from exhaustion and a sugar crash. The important part was that you two _weren’t in your bed_. Up till now you’d been sleepy, but with Raphael next to you your heart is racing and there’s no way you’ll fall asleep now.

And having trouble falling asleep is exactly why you didn’t want to share.

Raph’s breathing seems to even out after only a few minutes and you’re jealous that the turtle can slip into slumber so easily.  At least he doesn’t snore or talk in his sleep.

_Yet._

You try to get comfortable, but adjusting every few minutes to find that sweet spot has you stressed that you might wake the being next to you. You try a sort of meditation to slow your heart rate and calm your mind and that allows you to get a half sleep for a while.

Raph was right. He doesn’t move much. Your childhood friends were often spread eagle by now, had stolen all the covers, or had kicked you a couple times already. You normally sleep the same way he is…when you _can_ sleep.

Sometimes you drift off, but Raph can twitch or some sound can come from outside and you’re suddenly wide awake. Has the city always been this noisy and active at night around your building? You’re not normally a light sleeper, but this close proximity has you strung out. You glare, envious of the slumbering turtle next to you. Suddenly, you notice his hand. It moved at some point, so now it’s between your face and his. You study it without lifting your head from the pillow.

The boys aren’t so alien to you anymore. You have adjusted to life with friends that have shell backs, green skin, and three fingers and toes. To you, they’re just four kick butt practice partners and awesome friends. You still don’t even have any friends in martial arts class or around the city, so the boys have really brought light and warmth into your life. The hand in front of your face isn’t that weird when you really consider it. What is weird is all the random bandages the boys seem to wear all the time. Are they protecting their knuckles during punching? Did they get cut there? Why do they never seem to change them out?

Now Raph’s hand is finally unadorned, thanks to you. All these thoughts swirling in your head, without thinking about it, you just reach out for his hand and grasp his fingers. A sleeping Raph doesn’t seem to register it; nothing changes about his breathing and he doesn’t even move.

With no reason to let go, you finally seem to drift off just as the sun is rising and turning the sky gray. You dream about sleeping on clouds; the sky around you is pink and soft like cotton candy and the clouds you’re lying on make you feel like you’re floating.

You slowly come to, though, and wish you didn’t have to rejoin the land of the living. Last night’s sleep straight up sucked. You try to drift back to your bed of clouds when you smell it.

Coffee.

You turn over and see Raph in your kitchen, standing in front of your ambrosia machine.

You rub your eyes. “Raphie, you figured out my coffee machine. You are a god among men,” you say.

He chuckles, but puffs up a bit at the compliment, unseen by you as you still struggle to wake up. “I wouldn’t go that far,” he replies. “Do you want it black?”

You make a face as you stand up. “Oh god no. I have half-and-half in the fridge.” When you get closer to him, you notice something that makes you giggle.

“What? What’s so funny?” He fixes you with a deadpan look that says he will not deal with your shenanigans first thing in the morning.

“Your shell kanji got washed off from your shower last night. So you’ve got this ridiculous blurred red thing on your shell. Kind of looks like your Halloween makeup melted.”

He sighs, closing his eyes. “Perfect,” he grumbles.

“Hey, if you’ve got the stuff on you, I can fix it later.”

“You know what kanji was on my shell?” He sounds disbelieving.

“ _Yes_ , Raphie, I do. When you guys stand still for five seconds, I use an app on my phone to look the kanji up. Knowing kanji is part of my _job_. Maybe I can put an artistic spin on it and not have it look like you printed it off and slapped it on your back.”

“I’ll be sure to tell Mikey your critique of his art,” Raph says as he starts to make another cup of coffee for himself. You hit his hand away from the machine.

“How old are you to be drinking coffee?”

“Old enough,” he sasses back, glaring just as fiercely as he can in the morning.

“But what if it stunts your growth?”

He just leans closer to you, giving you a look that says you’re being ridiculous and he knows you’re doing it on purpose, before reaching for the coffee maker again, golden eyes fixed hard on you, daring you to stop him a second time. You don’t. He may have even flexed as many muscles as he could during the whole ordeal, implying that his growth could not be stopped.

After you both have breakfast, Raph doesn’t know what to do. He has to stay just like Mikey did that one night, waiting until darkness falls again. At least autumn has led to earlier sunsets and it won’t be that long until he can head back. Hopefully his fight with Leo is all blown over; he’s certainly ready to move past it.

“So, uh,” he clears his throat, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly. “What do you and Mikey normally do when he’s here?”

“Sometimes he reads my manga or fiddles with my PS3 or tablet while I work. Or we go upstairs and train.” Donnie helped set up a motion sensor camera so you’d be alerted if a turtle needed to make a quick escape.

“Do you have work to do?” he asks.

You shrug. “Some. There are some openings at the UN that I’d like to apply to, and if I submit some translations today, I get paid so I can keep buying junk food for you guys when you guys stay here.” You’re brutally honest, but your coffee hasn’t kicked in yet to make you polite.

“I’ll let you work. What do you have to work out with?”

You point to your weapons rack. “Sand bottles. Weapons…” You point down. “Floor.” You really need more coffee to treat your honesty. Raph shrugs it off, not taking it personally.

But through your work, you’re yawning widely and often and even the bright computer screen can’t keep you fully awake, nor can another cup of coffee.

After only a few hours of work, you lay your head on your desk. “I can’t take it anymore,” you say. “I’m exhausted; I’m napping.”

Raph looks in your direction at your tiny outburst-you’d been sitting there so quietly-as you shut down your computer, zombie walk over to your bed and collapse onto it.

You have all the space you want this time, but you still curl up in your normal small position. You don’t need the space, but it’s nice to know it’s there. You immediately relax and start to drift off despite the caffeine in your system.

Suddenly, you feel a shifting weight on your bed and you want to groan and cry. How can Raph return? He slept like a log all night, lucky bastard. Can’t he leave you the space to sleep?

Then you feel a warm hand rest on your own and your eyes snap open to see Raph’s smug grin filling your vision.

_He’d been awake._

_He knows you held his hand last night._

Your face turns red in mortification and you bury it into your pillow and the turtle chuckles. When you think your face isn’t betraying you anymore, you come up for air. Raph still has that victorious grin on his face, but his eyes are closed. He didn’t sleep as well as he pretended to last night, either.

Society creates so many ideas about what two people should do in one bed at night that it had filled your head like a fog and stressed you out. Something about the daylight makes it feel like there’s no invisible pressure on sleeping side by side. It’s just a nap. During the day. Daylight. No darkness. You feel the stress and ideas that you were pressured into believing your whole life begin to float out of your body, like those clouds you dreamed of. You scoot a bit closer to Raph’s form until your knees are touching, your hands still clasped.

Napping with someone isn’t so bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, if you would like to listen to the music that helps inspire me to write these chapters, I have a playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdr3xh2qvG495qpJ3nqYoMFfJlSlJxCrd


	8. Kidnapping part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just when it seems things are finally moving forward, something happens to set it all back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did say this fic would be mostly self-indulgent fluff, but I lied. Here is some angst >) I didn't mean to go on such a prolonged break again. I went on vacation, caught a cold that made me so light-headed a coherent sentence was not happening, and I had more writer's block, even though this chapter plus the next 3-5 that follow it (I'm not sure on numbers, we'll see what I come up with) are the ones I'm most excited about writing.  
> Anyhoo, enough small talk. Here is the update for your enjoyment.

Mikey stops by one evening all by himself. He checks the roof first, but it seems the approaching winter has moved you inside more often lately. He slips down the fire escape and checks your windows. Your curtains are wide open and being on a high floor has given you a false sense of security when you have four ninja friends who like to drop by unexpectedly. So while no one on the street can see you, ninjas having blackmail on you can be just as bad, if not worse.

And blackmail is exactly what Mikey has on you this evening when he finds you cleaning your apartment while singing along to Disney love songs. At first, he just sees you cleaning, but he opens your window-freshly oiled to allow ninja friends access-and his blue eyes widen at the sight and sound. Not because your cleaning-dancing is silly (and not like you two haven’t done that together) or that your singing is terrible (it’s passable); it’s that _you_ are singing _Disney love songs_. _You_. It is so out of character for you, he wonders if this is your evil twin. Singing Disney love songs is unheard of for you. You have playlists dedicated to working out and woman artists and every other Disney song _but_ the love-y ones. You’ve always made fun of Disney love scenes or, at most, glared at them like they personally offended you and you wished for laser eyes to make the scene end.

“Hey, Tigress,” Mikey’s tone is teasing as he slips inside, after listening to about three songs. You gasp and whirl around, cheeks immediately burning with blush. You bury your face into your hands to hide your embarrassment.

“Hi, Mikey,” you peep.                         

Mikey is no fool. A girl who doesn’t listen to love songs suddenly _listening_ to love songs? He can put two and two together. He fixes you with a cheeky grin.

“So…who is he?”

“No one!” You answer quickly.

“Aha!” Mikey points a finger at you. “So you _do_ have a crush on someone!”

“Shit.” You answered too quickly. You move about your apartment, trying to find something to dust or clean to distract yourself and Mikey.

“Who is it?” Mikey pesters, following you. He gasps. “Is it me?”

You whirl around, a quick denial on your tongue, but you stop yourself in time to realize who you’re talking to. You step up to the orange masked turtle and place your hands on his shoulders.

“No, Mikey, I’m sorry, it’s not.”

He places his hands on top of yours, pulling them away from him so he can hold your hands. “It’s okay, gurl, I was only kidding. The first night we hung out, you called me your first friend and I vowed that I’d always be your best friend after that.”

Your face softens. “Aww. I love you like that, too, Mikey.”

Mikey drops your hands. “So it’s not me.” He rubs his chin in thought. “Did you finally meet someone in your martial arts class?”

You simply shake your head. You gave up on making friends there, so how could there be a guy you’ve gotten to know enough to have a crush on?

“You sure? No one to spar with-” he feints at you and you put your arms up to block “-or…Holy cheese, it’s one of my brothers,” he realizes. Who else would you get a crush on but someone you’d spend a lot of time with and who you could practice and spar with?

“Pft, what?” You fake.

“It’s gotta be Leo. Right?” He pesters as you try to get away from him in the enclosed space. “He is the leader. Don’t girls always fall for the leader? And you two practice a lot of tai chi and pakua together.”

“I’m not talking about this!” You singsong. He may have figured out it’s one of this brothers, but you will absolutely not reveal which one.

“Ohh, I bet you like Donnie! I bet he likes you because you put up with his science talk and you two watch a lot of TV together and play with weapons sometimes, too.”

“Not telling!” You singsong again. You give up on cleaning with Mikey bugging you, so you plop onto the couch and turn on the TV. Maybe you can distract him with a shiny cartoon or a video game.

“Although, speaking of weapons, you and Raph practice with all of our weapons a lot. And you work out together a lot, too. And spar. And he comes with me to hang out with you, too…” Mikey trails off, studying your face to see if you give anything away. You feel him staring and just purse your lips, shrugging.

You find a cartoon and hope it’ll distract him, but it doesn’t. He just keeps staring at you, wondering which of his brothers you might be crushing on.

“You like Raph, don’t you?”

You turn to face him and give him a disbelieving look, practicing your poker face. All his staring gave you time to think of a lie. “What makes you think I have a crush on Raph?”

“You stare at him a lot,” Mikey answers frankly.

You can’t take it anymore. “His arms are gorgeous and he has a temperament like mine!” You quickly and easily give in.

Mikey’s jaw drops, an amazed look on his face that he guessed it on the first try. Of course, once he spent the time to think about it, it made sense. You hang out together, you practice together, you joke just as much as you two do; all the signs were there. How could he have missed them for so long?

Did something happen that night he went missing at your place?

You see an evil glint enter his eyes and you know what he’s thinking. “Mikey, you can’t tell Raph. There’s no way he likes me back.”

“Ch,” he dismisses. “Gurl, I got you.” And by ‘got you’ he really means he’s going to find out soon if Raph likes you back or not. Finally, he turns his attention to the show you picked on television.

A few days pass after your conversation with Mikey. Looking to hang out and for a little company, you head down to the lair. You find the boys enthralled with the basketball game on their TV, entering just as the players jump for the ball.

“Ugh, you guys are watching the game?” You whine, plopping down next to Raph.

Immediately, the boys start protesting your comment and shooting you dirty looks.

“Do not blaspheme in the House of Knicks,” Raph growls, stuffing a handful of popcorn into his mouth from the bowl on his lap.

“Sor-ry,” you mock apologize, scrunching up your face. “I was out running errands and public transportation was crowded with fans heading for the game. I didn’t know you guys liked the NBA, though.”

“Do you have a favorite team?” Donnie asks.

“No,” you answer. “The town I come from doesn’t have any major sports teams. I do enjoy NCAA football, though.”

“Hold on.” Raph’s head turns from the screen to you. “You _actually_ watch football?”

“Yes,” you snip, not liking Raph’s tone.

“Actual-American-not-soccer football?” He tries to confirm.

You nod emphatically. “I kind of got brainwashed into my school’s team since I was in the marching band. It was the only sports team that won-”

“Hold up,” Raph interrupts again, louder. “You’re a band nerd?!”

“I prefer the term ‘band geek’ or ‘bando,’ but yes.”

“Pics or it so did not happen,” Raph challenges.

You simply shrug before pulling out your phone, opening your gallery app and scrolling to your backed up albums of football games. You had the phone to Leo, who looks just as curious and he will treat your phone better than Raph might. Raph jumps up to get on Leo’s other side so he can watch his brother scroll through the pictures.

“Do you play your instrument anymore?” Donnie asks, watching Leo scroll as well.

“Nah. I don’t really have a good reason to. I only joined band because I wasn’t athletic or smart, but I found out music scholarships are a thing.” Before any of the boys can argue you do martial arts and you’re plenty athletic with them, you remind them, “I didn’t start martial arts until I was 19 and didn’t do anything sports related through all of high school. So no athleticism and no brain like Donnie’s, I had to turn to music.”

You don’t know how much of your little sob story the boys actually absorb as they fawn and laugh over your pictures with your school color hair, your long marching pants that flatters no one’s figure, and your section members antics.

“I bet you could still be good at playing,” Mikey comments, handing you back your phone once his brothers are done making fun of your past self. He may or may not already be planning something for you to do in their hip hop Christmas album, depending on how good he finds you to be.

You merely shrug. “I have an okay ear. I can pitch match. But I wouldn’t go auditioning for American Idol or moving to Nashville anytime soon, that’s for sure.”

“So you actually watch and understand football?” Raph challenges again.

“Yes, Raph,” you answer, sounding perturbed. “And basketball, too.” You gesture to the TV, where the score is already climbing. “I prefer NCAA over these overpaid, overpriced man baby players.”

“Oi! That is the second curse against our beloved Knicks, girlie. One more and you’re out of here,” Raph threatens, picking up his popcorn bowl again.

“Isn’t that a baseball reference, though?” You taunt, reaching for your own handful of his popcorn.

“Don’t you do it,” Raph growls, watching your hand.

“Fight me, turtle.” You mock glare at him before stuffing the biggest handful you can muster into your mouth. The red masked turtle can’t stay mad at you when you look like an overstuffed hamster and laughs at you, instead.

 “Why don’t you like basketball?” Raph asks, trying to fend off your attacks on his food.

“The college basketball teams weren’t that great, but our football team always won. And after football season, the fans didn’t act as charged up and excited in basketball games as they did for football. Hell, our stadium was always full, but we couldn’t even fill half the arena during basketball season. And I feel like basketball just goes so fast. Football takes four hours with slow point gain, but basketball is two hours with a quick point gain that I can’t keep up with. And again, a losing team doesn’t help your brainwashing.”

“Then what are your thoughts on soccer?” Raph asks.

“I feel so bad for those players. They work so hard, running back and forth on that giant field, for so little reward. How is that even fun? Now maybe if soccer had the point values of football, I might be more entertained-”

Mikey watches your easy flowing conversation with his bigger brother. Yep, all the signs are definitely there. But could Raph return your feelings? Mikey wouldn’t be a good friend-and wingman-if he didn’t find out. He suddenly stands up. “Uh, I gotta get something…over there!” He runs around the couch, but even his pitiful excuse isn’t noticed by his sport-hypnotized brothers.

“Hey, Raph, can you come check out this thing?” He calls out after a few seconds.

“What?” Raph yells, barely turning his head so he could still watch the game but hear Mikey better.

“Can you come here a minute?”

“Why?” He will not be pulled away from the game.

“I need your help with something, just c’mereeeee,” Mikey whines.

Raph covers his eyes. He swears, Mikey, he loves you, but you’re a little shit. He puts the popcorn down on the pizza box table in front of the couch and sees you eyeing his snack.

“Girlie, you touch my food again and I am throwing you over my shoulder and out of here,” he threatens. As he walks away, you taunt him by slowly reaching for the bowl. He makes the motion of watching you before finally turning his back and lumbering over to his orange masked brother near their beds by the kitchen.

“Mikey, I swear if you pulled me away from the game just to-”

“Raph, I have a question for you,” Mikey interrupts.

Raph’s angry tirade was interrupted, so his brain shorts out a minute. “What?” he asks.

“How do you feel about Tigress?”

You decide to be nice to Raph and you won’t eat anymore of his popcorn. However…

“I am going to go make my own popcorn. I am stealing your food, since you guys always come over and steal mine.”

“Help yourself,” Leo invites, giving you an approving side look. You have a point; they do come over and eat your food a lot. It’s only fair you eat some of theirs. Especially since you, April and Casey help them buy a lot more of it now.

You step into the kitchen and start digging around for a microwave popcorn packet.

 _Thanks, Raphie, for making me crave popcorn now_ , you muse to yourself. You have no one to blame but yourself, since you stole from his bowl. You pull out something, only to see it’s April’s wasabi peas. You set it aside, making a face. _Ugh, how does that girl eat wasabi for fun?_

As you dig around for popcorn, you suddenly hear your name and your ears tune in to the sound’s source. Are Mikey and Raph talking about you? What about you?

“How do you feel about her?” Mikey reemphasizes.

Raphael tries to keep on a good poker face as he plans his answer. He knew this day would come.

He chortles low as he buries something deep inside himself.  “What’s there to feel? She’s a little shrimp of a little girl. I mean, her martial arts are great and all, but she couldn’t really take me on in a real fight. She just got lucky that one time. What’s the fun in in a partner you can’t really fight?”

“Raph-” Mikey tries to interrupt.

“You know, it’s cute when she tries, but it’s really just pathetic. She has no instinct. Just look at how slow she and Leo have to move when they spar together. Honestly, why couldn’t I have saved Rhonda Rousey that day instead of her?”

“Nice.” Raph whirls around to find you standing behind him. Shit, how much had you heard?

“I guess it’s good to find out how you’ve really felt all this time. Who would have pegged you for being such a great liar, Raphael?”

Shit. You’d heard it all. Raphael can’t meet your eyes and he looks away. In private, he’d become “Raphie.” Normally, he was “Raph.” To hear his full name come from you in that accusing tone makes him feel like he’s five years old again and being scolded by Splinter. Only this is a thousand times worse, because not only had you caught him in the biggest lie of his life, but that wasn’t how he felt about you at all. You think it’s true now, thanks to his big mouth and bigger ego and pride. Looking back on this, he’ll never know what possessed him to talk about you that way.

You don’t stick around, spinning on your heel to head back out as soon as you arrived.

“Raph. Bro.” Even Mikey’s tone is both full of disappointment and scolding and Raph can’t take it. Clenching his fists, he turns on his younger brother. “What?” He yells out.

Mikey simply shakes his head, not intimidated by Raph’s anger this time. “She _likes_ you, bro.”

For once in his life, Raphael is stunned into silence.

“Mikey, this is serious.” The red masked turtle gestures towards the exit. “She thinks I hate her.”

“I am serious, Raph. All signs point to her liking you. Plus, she told me. She likes _you_. _Likes you_ , likes you,” Mikey says in the elementary school way that means that someone has a crush on you.

Raph plops down onto the kitchen chair in disbelief, rubbing his face with his hands.

“I…have royally fucked up, haven’t I?” he asks through his six fingers.

Mikey eyes the exit, pretty much expecting you to come in with a battle cry and start wailing on Raph for what he said, beating some sense into him. It takes a few moments to realize that’s not going to happen at all. Wow, his older brother _really_ hurt you. “I should probably go find her and talk to her.”

“No.” Raph raises his head out of his hands. “No, I fucked this up. I should be the one to talk to her.” He stands.

“Why? So you can reject her and make her feel worse?” Mikey watches him going towards the exit, wondering if he’s going to have to fight his big brother from leaving and making a bad situation worse.

Raph stops short right beside Mikey. He turns to face him.

“No,” is all the red masked turtle says before continuing outside.

Mikey’s eyes widen as Raph leaves. “Woah,” is all the orange clad turtle can say before smiling.

Raphael eventually finds you on a random roof halfway to your place. He assumed you took the free running route home to burn off some of your anger. Anger he caused.

You would have preferred to work your anger out in Gym Turtle, but since Raph was there and created this mess, you just left. You couldn’t make it all the way home before your emotions overwhelmed you and your eyes were too watery to see your way. Logic said you should have walked but Raph just _pissed you off so much._

He coughs to announce himself, startling you to turn around, guard up and ready to attack and it’s almost like your second meeting all over again; except human fists can’t bruise his plastron.

“You!” You charge at him. Even if you “can’t properly take him out,” you’ll still enjoy trying. If the turtle knows what’s good for him, he’ll stand still and let you hit him like he deserves.

“Hey!” He catches your wrists before you can even hit him. That’s fine. You still have two working legs that can kick his knees out. Let’s see Donnie nurse a blown kneecap. Unfortunately for you, the turtle is still a good deal taller than you and can keep you out of reach of his legs. So here he is, gripping your hands and keeping you out of kicking range. With a frustrated yell, you throw his grip off of you and storm away from him.

“Look, whatever you want to say about me or are definitely thinking about me, I just want to tell you you’re right,” Raph says.

You freeze. “And?” You turn back around, angrily crossing your arms over your chest and glaring at him. The next thing out of his mouth better be an apology, followed by an explanation of why exactly he was an asshole.

“And…” Raph tilts his head to the side, eyes closed. “I’m sorry, alright?”

“Sorry for what?” You demand, anger burning bright in you like a dying star. “Sorry for lying to me all these months, or just sorry you got caught?”

“Neither!” Raph throws his arms up. He tries to collect his thoughts, to try and explain to you what he was thinking. But any feelings other than anger and violence are difficult for the turtle to explain to anyone else. His brothers always seem to know what he’s thinking, so he doesn’t have any practice giving voice to any other feelings.

“Ever since Mikey started hanging out with you, he’d always come back home and talk about how awesome you were, how good you were at martial arts, how nice and fun you were…the guy just wouldn’t shut up about you! And then the more time _we_ spent together, I could see why he liked you so much. And I thought, ‘if this girl is going to like any of us, it’s going to be Mikey.’” Raph places a hand on his chest. “No person on this entire planet could ever… _love_ me. I’m a mutant turtle, I’m nobody’s definition of handsome, and I’m always mad as hell. I could be interested in girls, boys, other mutated animal people, it wouldn’t matter because I’m…I’m just a Beast.”

The more Raph explains, the more the burning anger in you starts to abate. He seats himself on the low ledge of the roof as he explains and you slowly approach him.

“So here comes Mikey, all of a sudden asking if I liked you and I thought, ‘here it is, he’s going to tell me he likes her. If I’ve been showing any sign of liking her, I gotta cover it up and encourage him to go for it with you.’ I thought, ‘she can’t _not_ love Mikey, he’s an annoying ray of sunshine and any girl would be lucky to have him. And if she doesn’t, I’ll just have to beat some sense in to her.’” He presses his fist into his other palm and chuckles. “Even if _I_ liked you, it couldn’t matter; I can’t get in the way of my little bro’s happiness.”

You are both silent for a few moments, the sound of the city going on below you two. The background noise seems like a world away. It might as well be a silent mountain top up here, for all you don’t notice the sirens, passing cars, and distant music.

“Do you like me?” You ask.

Raph got into this mess with a lie; he can’t do it again.

“Yes,” he says softly, not looking up at you.

“Well, guess what?”

Raph flinches, bracing for the words. What words he’s more afraid of, he can’t tell.

Your demeanor and voice soften. “I don’t like Mikey. In that way. You’re right, he is an annoying ray of sunshine and any girl would be lucky to have him. But I’m not the right girl for him.” You sit down beside the turtle.

“What?” Raph squawks in disagreement. “But you’re always so happy to see each other, you’re always laughing about some inside joke and it seems like you two always know what the other is thinking.”

“Mikey is a ray of sunshine that I don’t even deserve in my life,” you praise again, “but being that happy all the time is exhausting for me. That’s not who I am. I have a difficult past, and I’m always angry because of it.” You look thoughtful for a second. “And in spite of it. When I found out you were pretty much the same way, I marveled at how much I could relate to someone else for the first time. Did you know you were the first person who didn’t tell me to calm down when I was mad?” His lips barely upturn as you smile at him.

“You’ve always been watching out for me, since the night you tried to save me from that mugger. I always have fun with you and Mikey. It just seems like whenever I’m with you, I can relax and be myself; the real self that not a lot of people like. The point is: I like you, Raph. Probably more than I should,” you finally confess.

It was one thing for Mikey to tell him you liked him. It was another thing entirely to hear the words come from your own mouth. Now he’s here; what does he do about it? He suddenly stands, needing to move and think before he panics.

“But how would this even work?” Raph asks, gesturing between you two as the weight of this situation dawns on him. “Don’t normal people do things like go on dates out in public, make out and have s-…se-” He can’t even think about it, let alone say the word right now. Let’s just say, Donnie’s found some videos in the last few years. Gross videos of humans that Raph wishes he could brain bleach out of his skull.

“Whoa, hey.” You hold out your hands in a stopping gesture. “Before you go any farther with that dangerous thought, there’s probably something else you should know about me, Raph. I’m…different.”

“ _You’re_ different? Girlie, have you looked at me and you lately? Have you forgotten what _you_ look like?” Raph asks, and you can’t tell if he’s implying you’re simply human or good looking.

“I’m different from even a majority of humans, Raph. I’m-” You inhale deeply. You don’t talk about this too often, not feeling the need to share, as well as not having anyone _to_ tell. “I’m what’s known as an asexual.”

Raph just gives you a bewildered look. “What does that mean?”

“It means that-” You gesticulate as you try to explain. “I don’t have the urge to have sex. I feel like -” _Don’t confuse the poor guy, just come out and say it_ , you tell yourself. “It means I don’t feel sexual attraction to anyone. I don’t want to have sex. With anyone. Ever. "

Raphael is silent as he absorbs this information. “So you don’t have sex?” he asks.

“Yep. Do not want or need. Many people find that weird and abnormal. They say people like me just haven’t found good partners in bed or that we’re broken.” You shrug, swinging your feet so your heels hit against the bricks under your makeshift chair.

The red masked turtle doesn’t know how to respond to that, except that he really wants to tell you that you don’t seem broken to him at all. But before he can, you continue.

“Besides, it’s not like I don’t want to do other things with you. I’d rather spar with you or work out with you or cuddle with you or kiss y-” Your purse your lips in order to stop them from spewing any more nonsense. True nonsense, but still.

Raph still catches the word and he tilts his head, grinning wickedly as his confidence soars higher than Empire State Building.

“You want to kiss me?” He teases, leaning closer to you.

You cover your now tomato red face in your hands. “Maybe,” you don’t deny.

“You’re sure it’s me you want to kiss? And not Mikey? I could go get him and-”

“Oh my gooood,” you whine, feeling your face growing hot to the touch. This is why it was a bad idea to tell Mikey about your crush. Look what it led to. Now Raphael knew and was using it to make fun of you. Why did you not learn your lesson about sugar infused nights with Mikey the first time?

As gentle as Raph can be, he pulls your hands away, but you still look away in a last desperate attempt to hide your radioactively embarrassed face.

“Are you sure?” Raph asks softly, still in disbelief a bit himself, but trying hard to cover it with a cool charm. He’s giving you one last chance to say you’re pranking him or you’re actually disgusted by him.

You look up at him and a sudden confidence rises in you and you realize you can’t waste this moment. _Raph knows how you feel, now go get him, girl_ , a voice that sounds suspiciously like Michelangelo’s whispers in your head.

As if drawn by a magnet, the two of you lean in slowly for a kiss like some godawful romantic comedy-

“How sweet,” a voice says.

The two of you jump apart like you burned each other. For a split second, you wonder which turtle caught you two about to… _do that_ , but as adrenaline pumps through your veins and clears the fuzzy emotions out of your brain, you realize that the voice wasn’t familiar at all.

The two of you look up to see a silhouette of spikey armor and two other mutants. None of these beings are familiar to you, but Raph seems to know them as he jumps up and whips out his sai.

“Shredder?!” He exclaims in disbelief. No one had heard from him since the attempted Krang invasion. He moves to stand in front of you and block you. Normally this would be a hot button of yours; after all, you haven’t trained for months with his brothers and even longer in martial arts to be a damsel in distress, but since there are two huge looking mutants you haven’t seen before as well as the spikiest armor you are sure would not be a good idea to kick in any way, you’re going to let Raph defend you this one time.

“No,” the voice speaks again. They remove their helmet to reveal an Asian-looking woman.

“Karai?!” Raph is even more bewildered now.

“Yes!” She exclaims triumphantly. “Master Shredder has been missing ever since _you turtles_ ,” she spits the words out like venom, “prevented Krang from entering our world. In his absence, I have taken over the Foot Clan. I have been watching you turtles for months, hoping for some lead into Master Shredder’s disappearance.”

By now, if your brain was functioning normally, you’d be bored and wonder if this was the part where the villain started monologuing and telling all about their evil plan. But you’re more than a little distracted by adrenaline, a woman wearing the spikiest samurai armor you’ve ever seen, and _two other mutants._ You are now learning there is a big difference between watching your action movies and real life.

“And what do I find instead? That you have made friends with another girl. Imagine my surprise in finding out she isn’t April O’Neil. But you turtles are pathetic. That you _freaks_ think that you can be normal and make normal human friends. All it does it give you a weakness.” Karai gestures with two fingers at you hiding behind Raph’s shell. “Get her.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” Bebop says, lowering his purple shades over his eyes.

Your own eyes widen. “Raaaaaph?”

“If you two creeps know what’s good for you, you won’t lay a finger on her,” Raph growls, sai chambered at the ready as he stands between you and the rhino and warthog.

“Aw, don’t want us to hurt your little _girlfriend_?” Rocksteady taunts. The two make smooching noises at Raph and laugh before they both charge at the turtle. What Bebop and Rocksteady didn’t count on was how agile you’d be. Your training with the turtles has paid off over these last few months. When they come at you, Raph charges at them and you leap out of the way.

Raph can’t keep an eye on you and fight off the Bopsteady duo. He needs his brothers’ help. But he can’t call for them on the walkie because he’s too engaged with his enemies, keeping an eye on Shredder-Karai, and keeping track of you.

It’s one thing for you to spar against people you know; people you don’t want to hurt. You have trained too long to let Raph do this alone, even if the rhino and warthog are intimidating as hell. The spikey armored lady seems to be content to let this fight play out and not participate herself. You will not let anyone hurt any of the turtles and a surge to fight and protect suddenly comes over you and you charge at the first mutant in your path.

Bebop clutches at his stomach after your kick, but man did it feel like you’d kicked a brick wall. That gut is not just gut, it’s muscle.

“She’s got some _kick_ to her, Rock!” Bebop jokes, already straightening up as if your kick wasn’t even a tickle to him.

“Oh yeah?” The rhino man says. “I’ll trade you for this ankle biter over here!”

“I’ll show you ankle biter!” Raph growls, swinging out with his sharpened sai. But his opponent has already dodged out of the way to charge at you and Bebop is coming at him.

Before you can react again, Rocksteady has scooped you up in a bear hold from behind. You’ve been trained to fight just such a hold and you squirm and kick at the rhino’s legs.

“Ow! Hey! That’s not very nice,” the mutant lectures you. You manage a good kick to just above his kneecap and Rocksteady yelps in pain and releases you. You drop down and shove your elbow into his solar plexus with all your might, which pitches him forward and your fist swings upward to hit him in the face. All the training and iron hand in the world couldn’t help you in that fateful moment when you forgot what exactly you were fighting as your back fist strikes his horn. 

You curse loudly and clutch at your hand. Raph hears your curse and calls out your name as Rocksteady just scoops you up again in your moment of weakness, crushing you tighter so you have to choose between struggling again or breathing.

“I got her, Karai, but I can’t guarantee for how long!” Rocksteady yells out.

“Fine. Move out!” Karai orders, placing the samurai helmet back on her head.

“Raph?” You call out. You don’t know how these three managed to sneak up on you, but their exit is anything but silent. As if waiting for her signal, a helicopter emerges from the side of the building, blades whirring loudly and creating a wind and noise tunnel from the surrounding buildings. Karai easily hops into the flying vehicle, followed by the not so graceful Foot mutants as Rocksteady tries to keep his grip on you long enough to get you in and Bebop prevents Raphael from getting at you. The red masked turtle tries his best to get at you, but his best isn’t good enough and soon there is too much distance between the helicopter and him.

“Raph!” He thinks he hears you one last time, but the helicopter’s blades are drowning out everything before the door is shut and it’s too far out of his reach, even with his spare chain. He calls out your name again, reaching out for the helicopter as if he’ll suddenly develop Force powers and be able to just pull the copter back to him through sheer will. But it doesn’t happen and all he can do is watch helplessly as Karai takes you away.

Desperate, he finally remembers to call his brothers, but by the time they reach him, it’s too late.

You’re gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, one of the hardest things about writing the turtles is that when I would want to curse things such as "jesus christ" or "god," I have to realize that the turtles would not have been raised around that kind of wording, so they wouldn't curse like that. So I have to come up with other ways to curse or just rethink the old classics.  
> I also want to describe hair sometimes, but then I think, "what if someone reading this has a pixie cut?! I would disappoint them with my description!" And I have to remember this is SELF-indulgent, so if I want to describe my hair length at minimum, I should.  
> 


	9. Kidnapping part 1/Murder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys find you, but not how they expected

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry again that this took so long to update. I had to start working again because my Plan B job wasn't working out fast enough, so I had to start finding the balance between work and creativity and not being tired. Some days I get up, go to work, then rush off to my own martial arts. Then my friend got me into a new OTP, so I've been consuming anything to do with that like a wildfire in a dry forest. But like I said, I have lots of ideas for this fic, so updates may be slow, but they will come. Something always ends up lighting my fire again, when I see TMNT fan media that still has no girls being knowledgeable fighters, like I am. I may not be good at my martial arts, but at least /I know/.

The boys rush back to the lair.

“Don’t worry, Raph, we’ll track her down in no time,” Donnie says, placing his staff on the ground as he rushes to his computers.

“How? Her cellphone?” Raph isn’t far behind his techie brother. How could this have happened? How could he have let this happen? The red masked turtle keeps flashing back to that fight, wondering what he could have done differently.

_I should have done something else, I should have protected her, I should have told her to run, I shouldn’t have let her fight-_

“Better,” Donnie replies. “You remember that necklace she showed us?”

_“Guys! Guys, look what I got today!” You come running into the lair, yelling._

_“What’d you get, Tigress?” Mikey asks, always the first to greet you when you come in, as if he can sense you coming._

_They all gather around you so you can show them._

_“I got it at Brooklyn Flea. There was a stall today selling crystal and such, and there were these cute little turtle charms!” You hold up the necklace charm so the boys can study it. It’s not quite a jade turtle, but is definitely some kind of green stone. It has a purple blended shell._

_“And look, it even has a little six pack,” you coo, flipping it over to show the small carving in its stomach._

_“It is adorable!” Mikey coos with you._

_“Purple?” Raph asks. “Are you stating where you allegiance lie?”_

_“I think she is indeed saying who her favorite turtle is,” Donnie brags, adjusting his glasses._

_You give him a smug look. “You know purple was my favorite color before I met you guys.”_

_Donnie just grins. “All I hear is blah blah blah, Donnie’s my favorite guy,” he jokes and you shove at his arm._

“Yeah, I remember the necklace,” Raph says. “What does that have to do with this?”

Donnie starts typing away, opening a new program on one screen. “Because she asked me to put a tracker in that necklace,” he explains.

_“Donnie?” You approach him later._

_“What’s up?” He asks._

_“Can you do me a favor?”_

_“Sure thing.” He takes his feet off of his desk, spinning around in his skateboard chair to face you. “What is it?”_

_You take your new necklace off and hand it to him. “Can you put some kind of tracking chip in this thing?” You ask him._

_The turtle holds it up close to his eyes to study the structure of the charm. “Sure. If you don’t mind me taking the shell off and gluing it back on. Why do you want a tracking device in here anyway?”_

_You shrug. “I’ve heard enough about your adventures to know that something might go wrong. It’s an occupational hazard that I accept hanging out with you guys. Plus, I’m a girl in a big city. That in itself is the biggest danger of all.”_

_Donnie’s eyes travel up and down your body. Not in a creepy way, but as if he’s really studying you for the first time. Raised below ground in their own little world, they haven’t been subjected to the prejudices of the world above. The turtles understand that they are male, that Casey is also male, and you and April are female. But they haven’t been raised to think that women are weaker than men or aren’t as capable or smart. As far as the turtles are concerned, the humans they associate with have more than proven themselves to be capable and smart. Especially you, the way you’ve come down to train with them and teach them new martial art forms._

_But Donnie also watches TV and listens to news. He’s picked up on what other humans think about the female of their species. He doesn’t understand it, but he’s picked up on the way women can be treated, the things that can happen to women. Donatello doesn’t want to imagine anything happening to you, but he’ll do anything you want if it’ll make you feel safer._

_“Of course I can do that for you,” he answers, placing the necklace on his desk. The project is very quick and he returns the necklace to you the next day._

“So she asked you to put a tracking chip in her turtle necklace?” Mikey chimes in.

“She was expecting something to go wrong?” Raph is angry that no one else is focusing on this.

“I have a feeling where she might be, based on who Raph says kidnapped her. We just have to wait for the tech to boot up annnnnnd-” Just as Donnie timed, a ping comes up.

“Yep. Just as I thought: TCRI,” the purple masked turtle confirms.

Raph was already beating himself up over you getting kidnapped right from under his nose. He didn’t know he could ramp up anymore. But when Donnie says that abbreviation, Raph feels himself amp up from 10 to 20.

“Isn’t TCRI where Bebop and Rocksteady got mutated?” Raph asks in a panicked tone. If they aren’t going to focus on you being prepared for you to go missing, can one of his brother’s focus on _that?_

“I don’t think Karai has any more purple ooze, Raph,” Leo tries to calm him.

“But you can’t be sure. What if…what was that guy’s name? Stickman? Stockboy? What if that scientist guy made more?” The boys never did find out how Shredder got ahold of a purple glowing ooze that could mutate people into animals.

Leo suddenly freezes at Raph’s idea. “Gear up guys,” he speaks lowly. “We gotta get there as fast as possible.”

They arrive at TCRI’s roof as fast as they can. Donnie’s touch screen computer stays in front of him so they can track your necklace’s signal. The device’s signal is pinging every few seconds on Donnie’s screen.

“Well? Where is she?” Raph demands. Donnie doesn’t take his brother’s attitude personally; they’re all worried, but Raph has never been good at bottling emotions, especially bad ones like what he might be feeling now.

“It says-”

“What floor is she on? I’m ready to kick Foot tail!” Raph interrupts, slamming a fist into his palm. Donnie just gives his brother a look that says he does not appreciate being interrupted.

“Sorry.” Raph bows his head, dropping his fists.

“We’ll find her, Raph.” Leo puts a comforting hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Just…take it down a notch, okay?”

Leo’s tone isn’t condescending for once, so Raph tries to. The red masked turtle inhales deeply, trying to calm himself before nodding at Leo.

“Go ahead, Donnie.”

“It says that she should be up here…with us,” he breaks the news.

The boys’ eyes dart around as they turn to look for you. But there is no sign of anybody up here.

Mikey is the one to find your necklace. He picks it up off the roof-luckily it’s still intact-and hands it to Donnie. The four brothers share a look between themselves.

A few days pass. The turtles checked every floor of TCRI and found no trace of you. In fact, the whole building seems deserted, which gives the turtles eerie chills. For a building that tall, it should have sold out its floors to other businesses. Perhaps the Foot Clan controls the whole building and with no Foot, the building doesn’t get used. After your necklace failed to keep track of you, Donnie couldn’t locate your cellphone signal, either.

They try to keep an eye on your apartment in case you magically show up there. With no leads, the brothers unfortunately can’t do much except ask April to listen to any news stories involving Foot Clan activity, as well as Casey for any reports of the same at police headquarters. The turtles may be friends with the police, but it’s hard to report you missing when they were the last ones to be with you and no family.

A dead end puts all the turtles on edge, but Raph shows it the most. His normal exercises don’t help him calm down and take his mind off the night you disappeared. He keeps replaying the events over and over each time he hits the heavy bag, the replay in his head almost rhythmic to his hits.

You’d been about to kiss, right?

_Thump._

You said you liked him-

Thump.

Rocksteady grabbing you-

_Thump._

Karai being the one behind the mask-

 _Thump_.

He liked you, too-

 _Thump_.

Shouldn’t have let you fight-

_Thump._

“Raph.”

Mikey jolts Raph out of his thoughts. He places a hand on the heavy bag to steady it, breathing heavily. It is the only acknowledgement Mikey gets.

“Why don’t you take a break?”

Raph wants to rage; he’s strung out, they’re all strung out and tired. They’ve all gone on extra patrols, staying out past sunrise and going out before sunset. Donnie’s tried anything he could think of to track you and even set up motion sensor cameras at TCRI, but there hasn’t even been so much as a rat in the building.

Raphael’s anger isn’t an explosion; he’s too exhausted from extra patrols and lack of sleep. But it still simmers and threatens to boil over. “Why should I take a break when the Foot have her? Why should I take a break when she’s still missing?”

Mikey contemplates his brother’s questions.

“Bro, real talk? I get it. We all miss her. We’re all worried. Why does it seem like you’re beating yourself up more over this?”

Raph is silent, but considering what happened before you disappeared, he can read Raph’s silence. A small, almost fanboy-ish gasp escapes him. There hasn’t been any joy in the turtles these past few days, but a small sparkle of it enters Mikey’s eyes. “She told you, didn’t she?”

Instead of his eyes rolling, he rolls his whole head, wanting to look anywhere other than at his brother.

“She told you! And you…?”

Raph’s only answer is to glare at his brother, willing him to stop talking.

“Holy cheese,” Mikey awes, knowing what Raph is saying without him needing to say it. The red masked turtle’s breathing starts to even out, his heart rate already slowing. Mikey puts both hands on his brothers shoulders, their height difference obvious, but it is finally Mikey’s turn for the brotherly advice.

“Bro, we’re going to find her. She may not always be a damsel in distress, but she needs us now. And we’ll be there for her, no matter what. And when we finally rescue her, she’s going to be so happy to see you. But she won’t be happy to see you exhausted over worrying about her. So how about a break, yeah?”

Raph’s shoulders slump in defeat. When Mikey’s right, he’s right. He allows Mikey to push him away from the workout area and into the living area, where Raph flops down onto the couch.

He hadn’t realized how tired he really was. As soon as he stops moving, he feels ready to sleep, even though he was just working out. He closes his eyes and tries to meditate first, to keep his dark thoughts at bay. One doesn’t have to sit cross legged on the floor, hands in some special pose. You can meditate sitting in a chair, if one knows how to do it properly. He has his arms crossed across his plastron, making him look angry even at rest. He feels himself drifting from meditation to a half-asleep nap when he suddenly picks up the sound of the police radio near Donnie’s desk. It crackles with sound as a radio nearby comes to life.

At first, it just fills the living room with chatter; officers talking to each other in insignificant codes. One code weaves into his meditative nap.

“All units be advised: 10-14 spotted at Yonkers Power Plant. Possible Foot Clan activity. Any cars nearby to check? Over.”

Raph doesn’t catch the answer because he suddenly hears your voice in his head.

_“Raph!”_

His gold eyes fly open as the answer suddenly comes to him, like a gift from the universe. Normally, meditation doesn’t work as well for him as it does for Leo or Splinter. It’s nice for a rest, but even after all this time, he’s still more likely to fall asleep than get any real meditation. This time, he has a feeling…

“Guys! Get out here!” He yells into the void of the lair.

“Did you hear the radio?” He asks as his brothers appear.

“No, Raph.” Donnie lifts his glasses to rub his eyes. He’d just gotten back from a patrol looking for you, and he already kept terrible sleep hours before your kidnapping. “What’s up?”

“They said there was possible Foot activity at the abandoned power plant. And I think…I have a feeling that she’s there.”

The brothers share a look. Leo tilts his head, blue eyes narrowed.

“Just a feeling Raph?” He asks.

Raph just meets Leo’s piercing stare, feeling without a doubt that he’s right. He explains how he was trying to meditate and the two things seemed to connect to him.

“I know it sounds crazy, Leo. I know I don’t meditate well. But I just have a _hunch_ ,” Raph insists. “ _Please_ , Leo.”

The brothers are silent as Mikey and Donnie wait to hear Leo’s judgement.

“No. I believe you, Raph. We’ll check it out for new Foot Clan activity. And we’ll keep our eyes out for her. Let’s move out!”

With almost perfect timing, night has wrapped New York City in a dark blanket. With a late autumn chill in the air, the river is misty and the atmosphere near the power plant is cold from the water’s surface. Performing aeriel flips, they land on a building adjacent to the abandoned power plant. They wait and watch Donnie as he flips his goggles down over his glasses, the only one with night and heat vision tech. He slides them down over his glasses, adjust them for heat tracking.

“No sign of anyone inside,” he reports, sliding them back onto his forehead.

Raph feels restless, like an angry pitbull left on a leash. He’s ready to beat any Foot soldier he can find senseless and get answers on your location. He lunges forward every few seconds, ready to jump into the building, probably through an unbroken window like an action movie, fists and sai swinging.

Leo picks up on it. “Easy, Raph. We’ll go check it out.”

They sneak in through a sewer pipe that drains into the river. Their weapons are drawn, Leo’s blades flashing with outside light as each brother looks around the abandoned building. As he sweeps for any sign of movement in the dark, Raph imagines taking out a whole squad of Foot before taking the last one half-conscious and shake him around until he spills where they’re hiding you and what they’ve done to you.

 _Please be okay_ , he thinks. He can probably handle if you’ve been mutated, but if you’ve been hurt. That is a possibility Raph doesn’t want to consider.

Suddenly, lights flash on, even though the power plant is supposed to be abandoned. There are no longer light fixtures in the building, but it seems someone-the Foot clan, the turtles are realizing-brought in outside light sources. They are spotted. For an instant they want to bolt, but then their urge to fight overcomes the flight. They circle up, shells touching as they bring their weapons up to guard, looking around desperately for an enemy.

“Hello, turtles!” A familiar, feminine voice calls out to them.

Raph rages. “Karai!” He yells out, practically foaming at the mouth, trying to see her through the blinding lights. It’s like being on a stage, all the lights on you, while the audience is dark and spectral, beyond your vision. “Where is she?”

Other lights begin to turn on and the boys finally have more light to spot Karai. Just as Raphael described days ago, she is now wearing the Shredder armor. She is only lacking the intimidating helmet.

“Where is who?” Karai asks, seemingly innocent.

“You know damn well who!” Raph points an accusing sai at her. “If you won’t tell me, I’ll come up there and beat it out of you! Where. Is. She?”

Karai pretends to look thoughtful for a moment before snapping her fingers, as if the answer suddenly comes to her. Or like she’s summoning someone. A shadow streaks past her, leaping and spinning off of the walkway Karai stands on above the turtles. With a flash of blinding metal as light refracts off twin blades, they flinch away from the figure that lands beside them.

“Do you mean…my newest soldier?” Karai taunts.

It’s you.

The turtles recognize you, despite the outfit change. Hard, black leather armor blends with baggy clothes, for protection and hiding weapons. Heavy, black makeup surrounds your eyes, almost as if Karai herself did your makeup under your duress. The turtles would almost laugh at you and make a joke about Halloween, if you didn’t have two large broadswords pointed at them as you assume a reverse battle stance.

The boys gasp your name. Raph pushes himself to the front of the group.

“Girlie? What are you doing?” He asks, a painful look crossing his face.

“I told you, she’s my newest soldier. She realized that the Foot Clan would give her a better future than anything you turtles-” Karai says that word with all the venom she can spit- “could offer her. She is now my best warrior in the Foot Clan. I never would have suspected you turtles of harboring such a talented warrior.”

Talented? You? The boys exchange confused glances. Sure, you put up a good defense when sparring with them and taught them new things. But a real warrior? The turtles always took it easy on you and you seemed to shy away from harder fights against them. You joked about your easy losses and could never seem to take a real spar seriously. They loved you, but _Mikey_ had more drive to fight over a pizza.

Karai shrugs at their disbelieving looks. “You don’t have to take my word for it. Why don’t I give you a little demonstration?” She snaps her fingers again and, like a dog, you respond instantly.

You move so much faster than the turtles have ever seen before. They jump back as you start whirling your broad swords in a tornado like spin, the blades occasionally clinking together and the metal occasionally blinding them from all the lighting. There probably hasn’t been this much energy in the Yonkers Power Plant since its glory days.

“Since when does she know how to use broad swords?” Mikey yells, trying to keep away from you. Is this what Karai was talking about? Was there things you knew you hadn’t told them about? You whirl and attack, ducking any half-hearted attempt the boys make to defend or attack you back. When not defending half-assed attacks, you are dodging and kicking out, swords still ready to defend yourself.

They were not prepared for this situation at all.

“Girlie, what are you doing?” Raph asks, ducking under a swing of your swords. “It’s us! Your friends!” You don’t answer, or show any sign of recognizing them at all. Your face remains impassive as you continue to swing the wide blades around. The red masked turtle jumps back from an attack and with horror, realizes that the blades are actually sharp. You never practice with a sharpened weapon, nor do you own any.

_“I prefer either the wooden weapons when I can get them,” you’d once said. “If I have to deal with an opponent, I can just hit them repeatedly over the head or kick them in the groin. I don’t want to kill anyone. Let law enforcement deal with them.”_

_This isn’t right_ , Raph thinks. Things aren’t adding up. Your kidnapping, now to serve your kidnapper, not to mention joining a nefarious gang. Terrible makeup. Sharp weapons-

He bats away an incoming sword with his sai. “I don’t want to fight you!” He insists, stepping back, sai up in a guard. “I don’t want to hurt you!” Even though this is already hurting him. You wouldn’t be in this situation now if it hadn’t been for him. You wouldn’t have stormed out if he’d just been honest and Karai never would have found you. He and his brothers had tried everything they could to track you down, he’d still let you down, hadn’t he? That’s why you’d joined Karai and the Foot Clan.

His words seem to have no effect.

“Yeah, gurl, it’s us! Your friends!” Mikey tries to get your attention away from his brother. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you! Don’t tell us you’ve actually joined the Foot!” Mikey would never accept that; not his best friend. You simply whirl around and start going after Mikey instead. He jumps back from the sharp steel.

“Leo! What do we do?” Mikey yells out, dodging your attempted cuts and batting your swords away from his body with his nunchakus.

From Leo’s point of view, they have no choice. You clearly chose your side. They didn’t want to fight you, but you clearly want to fight them and won’t be deterred.

“Disarm her if you can!” Leo orders.

“Don’t hurt her!” Raph adds to Leo’s orders.

Thanks, Raph. As if that isn’t conflicting. Of course none of them want to hurt you. But the choice has just become them or you.

Your face never seems to change its expression, nor do you ever react to anything they say to goad you. You fight the four of them off like a spitfire, a skill you never showed around them. Had they underestimated you all this time? It certainly seemed so, the way you got the blades close enough to cut them and dodge their own attacks with ease, as fluid as oil and just as explosive.

Eventually, Donnie manages to get a lucky hit on you. While you’re distracted by Leo, his staff comes swinging down on your left wrist, causing you to release your sword. Not even a gasp of pain comes from you as you look down at your injured wrist. That gives the boys confidence that maybe they can get inside your defense and disarm you after all. No sooner do they think that that there’s a sudden clinking of metal in the air and the next thing Leo knows he’s dodging out of the way to avoid the pointed, heavy end of a chain whip aimed at his face. It misses by inches.

As you fling the chain whip at Leo, you leap back and now it seems even harder to get to you. Your chain whip and remaining broad sword whirl even faster than the dual swords did. You also now seem even harder to approach; the chain whip keeps up a wider defensive perimeter around you.

“Dude! She knows how to use a chain whip?” Mikey exclaims. Apparently there was a lot you hadn’t told them. Karai was right; you seemed to have a lot of latent talent in you. It was heartbreaking to see that Karai was the one who brought this out in you, rather than them. They’d underestimated you so much, had handled you with kid gloves.

Raph surges in, too quick for you to throw the chain whip and too close now to use it. You swing across to cut him, but he catches the blade in an x-block with his two sai.

Your name drops from Raph’s lips. “Don’t do this. Come back with his,” he begs, eyes pleading with you. “You don’t really want to be with Karai, do you? To fight against us?” You don’t answer, your face still unexpressive and blank, your eyes dark and unrecognizable. “I know you’re probably mad at me. I get it and I’m sorry I let Karai take you. But do you really want to join the Foot just because of that?”

You still remain silent and Raph’s anger and exhaustion finally boil over. A growl starts low in his chest that builds to a roar and he flings your blade up and away. It is the first time your face changes at all, but only to show shock at your weapon flying up. Your grip tightens before the sword can fly away and now you and Raph are going at it like enemies. His sai blocking your chain whip spins and sword cuts causes sparks to fly from your metal weapons.

 _This isn’t like you. Something is wrong. Metal weapons._ These thoughts keep passing through Raph’s head as his instincts take over into a real battle. A real battle with you. Where had you been hiding these skills all along? But Raph is too angry at your betrayal, at what he doesn’t understand is going on here, at feeling like he’s missing something about this whole thing. Something about this situation stinks. But his anger causes him to slip, to make mistakes. A few times, the point of the chain whip hits his plastron, his arms, his face. Other times, he can’t quite get out of the way of your sword swings. The cuts you make on him start to sting as his sweat begins to blend with his blood. His brothers can’t get in to help, thanks to your spinning chain whip defense.

“Raph! You can’t keep this up!” Leo hollers.

“Don’t-” Distract me, Raph wants to finish, but he grunts as a chain whip smacks at the base of his neck. His brothers can’t get near you to defend him or disarm you anymore and the longer this fight goes on, the quicker they are tiring. They were already not in top form from looking for you. Combined with the adrenaline of having to fight you for real, the fight is taking its toll; especially when none of them can find it in them to seriously hurt you.

Leo finally makes the call.

“Guys, we can’t do this! It’s time to retreat!”

“Like hell it is!” Raph snarls, ducking under your chain whip only to grunt and gnash his teeth when you get in quick and kick his plastron.

Mikey and Donnie have already done what Leo said and leap out of the nearest window. Leo turns back to his biggest brother.

“Raph, let’s go!”

“But what about her?” Raph keeps his sai up to block as he turns to his brother, gesturing with his head at you.

“We’ll retreat and regroup. Now, come on!”

Raph turns back to you with a growl. Seeing that the turtles are running, your attack has finally stopped. Your broad sword is down by your side, chain whip folded back into your hand, but ready to strike the moment it looks like Raph might come at you. The red bandana wearing turtle looks back and forth at his retreating brothers and you. He finally gives in with a huff and runs to his brother.

You watch the two of them run away with no discernable expression on your face. Only your eyes slowly blink.

“Well done, my little soldier,” Karai praises, walking up behind you and placing a hand on your shoulder. “You will be a fine addition to my army.”


	10. Kidnapping part 2/TKO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raph doesn't give up on you and finds out what's really going on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate that updates between chapters are getting longer and longer. I had some mad writer's block on that second half. Thanks for sticking around if you've made it this far and have been waiting for this chapter. I hope it doesn't disappoint!

The boys return to the lair, despondent and shell shocked. Did that really just happen? Did they really just have to fight you? And lose? And retreat?

Usually Mikey would be the first one to try and lighten the mood with a joke, but it's Donnie who surprisingly speaks up first. Maybe his mind is just processing fastest and first.

“What was that about?”

None of the boys can come up with an answer, each one looking to the other for some explanation before three sets of eyes settle on Mikey. Surely your best friend has some clue that you weren’t happy with them anymore. Or that you never were. But Mikey just shakes his head, looking down. No, he answers without speaking, he hadn’t noticed anything like that at all.

“That wasn’t her,” Raph finally answers. “No way could it have been.”

“Or what, Raph?” Leo asks, rolling his eyes as he splays his arms out. “You expect us to believe that she was some kind of robot?”

“It could have been!” Raph argues back. “Didn’t anyone notice how she didn’t react to anything? Not to us and not to any injuries she did manage to get?” ‘Past your weapon defense’ is unspoken between the brothers. “What doesn’t react with pain to an injury other than a robot?”

“I’m sorry, Raph. But animatronics that look _that_ human just don’t exist yet. I highly doubt the Foot would be the first to invent it. Even if they still had Stockman’s help.” Donnie pokes a gaping hole into that argument.

“Okay, fine, whatever. But she didn’t even look like she recognized us!” He makes a broad gesture like he’s indicating you outside, wherever you are. “Even if she suddenly hated us and betrayed us, don’t you think she’d look regretful or happy about it?” If it’s one thing Raph noticed about you, it was how your face ran the gamut of emotions; as quick to laugh as you were to anger, your emotions were always apparent and easy to read on your face. When you looked so happy to see them, or the faces you made when you sparred…

None of his brothers answer. “Really?” he demands. Raph wasn’t exactly known for paying attention to details, but he thought that one had been obvious.

“Face it, Raph; she's betrayed us. She's not our friend anymore,” Leo says.

“No!” Raph argues. “I refuse to accept that!”

“Maybe Leo's right, Raph...” Mikey says.

Raph whirls on his little brother, shock and hurt evident on his face.

Who is more likely to give up on you? The turtle who thinks you might like him? Or the turtle who thought you were his best friend until you obviously turned your back on him and his family the minute you had a better offer?

“Mikey…” Raph exhales in disappointment. Is he the only one fighting for you?

“From now on,” Leo orders, locking eyes with each brother, “she is an enemy of this family.” The leader of the family has spoken.

* * *

 

“Donnie, _please_ help me with this,” Raph pleads with his brother later. “Please, I'm begging you.”

“Leo said-”

“I know what Leo said!” Raph snarls. “But I'm telling you, something’s wrong. You recorded the fight, didn't you? Can't you just analyze the footage? Please?”

Donnie studies his brother. He has never asked him for help like this. But Leo had already declared the matter closed. He closes his eyes and sighs, weighing the risks and reward in his head.

“Fine. I'll do it. But don't get your hopes up for anything good, Raph.”

Raph looks away from his taller brother's piercing gaze, body language saying it's already too late.

“Thanks, bro,” he breaths before leaving to let his brother work.

A few hours later, Donnie calls out for Raph. He tries to keep his voice casual, like he's just found a workout video the buff turtle should check out, but he ends up sounding amazed and disbelieving as his voice cracks.

Raph had been trying to distract himself all that time: he couldn't focus on working out and his nervous energy made it feel like he wasn't doing any good for his muscles anyway. Gaming and knitting had also failed to distract him. All his mind did was flashback to that fight with you.

“What is it? What did you find?” Raph tries not to look too eager at what Donnie may tell him.

“Now I told you not to get your hopes up-”

If looks could kill. “What. Did. You. Find?” Raph growls through clenched teeth.

Donnie turns to the computer screens, pointing to the one he's using. He plays the footage from the fight. There you are again, whirling and hitting and kicking like an angry feline. Donnie pauses the video and zooms in. The video is grainy and unrefined, so Raph doesn't notice what Donnie’s trying to get him to see. He gives his brother a confused look.

Donnie points to something behind you. It looks like an out of place pixel of light, not anything important. There had been so many lights during that fight. “There appears to be some weird glowing thing on the back of her neck. If I were to hazard a guess…” He pauses, trying come up with a simple explanation of what could be happening. “This chip is over the area of her brain stem. So there could possibly be a chance that she's being-”

“Mind controlled?” Raph finishes.

Donnie gives a slight shrug and tilts his head; not a yes, not a no.

“But if she was being mind controlled,” Raph reasons out loud, “then...she hasn't betrayed us by choice. She's being controlled by Karai!”

* * *

 

“This project you gave me has been working flawlessly, Stockman. Keep it up and maybe soon I will bring you back to New York City,” Karai says. She hangs up the video call before the scientist can retort. She slides the rolling chair away from the computer, turning and rising to head into another room.

Karai approaches your holding cell. She deactivates the mind control device with a simple, small remote as Bebop and Rocksteady shadow her.

As soon as your mind is released from the awful technology, a raging pain starts up in your head and you groan as your head slumps into your hands, trying to ease the throbbing migraine.

“What an amazing warrior you are,” Karai panders. You muster the strength to glare at her.

“Don't look at me like that,” she demands. “If you decided to join us willingly, there would be no need for the device.”

You remain silent.

“You could even join these two.” Karai gestures to her mutated soldiers. Like buff men wanting to impress a pretty woman, they start flexing and posing for you. “You could become the most powerful super soldier of the New Foot Clan.”

“Aw, that's mean, Karai,” Bebop whines, ears drooping in disappointment. Weren’t him and Rocksteady the most powerful Foot soldiers?

“The way this girl fights, I bet she'd mutate into a tiger or panther or something,” says the rhino.

“Hey, yeah! Or maybe-” And the two start discussing what animal you could turn into, the list quickly devolving into the ridiculous, such as a snake with snake arms.

The cat comment makes you think of Mikey and how he says the same thing about you, causing a pang in your chest that almost matches the pain in your head at the thought of your friends. Where are they? Do they know what's happened to you?

Are they coming for you?

Being under the mind control device, you aren’t aware of any of your actions. You can’t think about it now through the stabbing pain in your head, but you are missing almost a week’s worth of time. Under the device, you are a mindless puppet of the Foot Clan. It controls some basic functions for you while accessing your fighting knowledge, but blocks processing and memory. The last thing you remember is being kidnapped by Karai right before you and Raph were about to-

“Those are your choices,” Karai suddenly hisses, trying to reign in the mutant discussion. “Stay under the mind control device or serve by my side willingly. Mutation could be a bonus.”

You're still and silent for so long, Karai wonders if she really turned off the device.

“You forgot the third option,” you suddenly deadpan.

Karai’s eyebrows raise into her hair line. “Oh? And what might that be?”

“That you simply kill me, because I'd rather be dead than serve _you_ in any capacity!” Knowing it may well be your last defiant act, you dig deep to block out the pain and summon a last surge of energy. With a roar, you thrust kick your hardest at the cell door. You knew you wouldn't have been able to break it down even at your strongest; you just wanted to go out swinging.

Bop and Rock flinch back from the loud bang and Karai matches your yell, immediately reactivating the mind control device.

And your mind plummets into darkness.

* * *

 

Raph paces back and forth near Donnie’s work station as his purple masked brother watches him.

“It would make sense, wouldn’t it? Mind control?” Raph rambles as he moves.

“Raph,” Donnie warns. “It was just a guess. Like animatronics, I’m sure Karai doesn’t have access to mind controlling technology either.”

“Are we absolutely sure, though? What about that Stockboy dude you looked up to? Couldn’t he invent something like that?”

Donnie’s first reaction is to start to argue. He pauses as his brain runs through the possibilities and math. Raph gives a small, victorious grin when he sees his brother’s shoulders sag in defeat.

“I can’t believe I’m even considering this,” Donnie mutters.

“What if we confirmed it?” Raph asks, walking over to his brother and placing his hands on the skateboard chair’s arms, leaning into his space.

“Or denied it?” Donnie deadpans, implying that is the more likely option.

“Whichever. You can rub it in my face later if you’re right and it isn’t.”

“Later?” Donnie asks, raising his eyebrows under his mask. “If?”

“Yeah, if. Because we’re going to go find out.”

“What?”

“Yeah.” Raph has finally said it out loud. “We gotta find her again. Check that light on the back of her neck. Try and see if we can get through to her. Find out if she’s really serving Karai willingly or not.”

“First of all,” Donnie argues back, circling around Raph as he pokes holes in this flimsy plan. “She didn’t even talk to us the last time we fought her. How would you even get her to talk to us a second time? _Speaking of second_ -” he emphasizes before Raph can interrupt. “How do you expect to find her a second time? It was only by the rarest hunch that you found her the first time. How do you plan to track her-” Donnie suddenly stops ranting, eyes fixing on another computer screen.

Raph tries to follow what his brother sees, but doesn’t know which monitor to focus on. “What? What is it?”

“I don’t believe it.” Donnie sounds awed.

“What?” Raph demands.

Donnie turns back to Raph, eyes wide and disbelieving. “One of the motion sensor cameras just activated at TCRI.”

Quick as lightning, Raph realizes what Donnie is saying. You or Karai could be back at that building. He only has an instant to make a decision. All of these thoughts seem to flash across Raphael’s face and are easily read like a book by Donnie.

“I have to find out,” Raph says. “Are you with me, bro?”

Donnie, too, has only a few seconds to make a decision and he knows it. Every second wasted is a second that could be spent getting to you and helping you if you need it.

He inhales and nods emphatically. “I’m with you, Raph.”

_We don’t tell Leo,_ goes unspoken.

But Mikey…

* * *

 

It doesn’t take Raph long to find Mikey. There really aren’t many places to hide in the lair. He’s in their bunk bed, in the bottom bunk under a blanket fort made by the upper half and playing a handheld game system.

“Mikey. Bro.” Raph grabs a foot sticking out of the blankets and shakes it. “I need your help.”

Mikey simply grunts in acknowledgement, focused on his game as he tilts the handheld this way and that.

“Or should I say _she_ needs our help,” Raph emphasizes.

Mikey’s attention is fully pulled away from his game. It squawks in protest, an indication that Mikey’s character died.

“But Leo said-”

“I know what Leo said.” Raph’s tone suggests that he’s said that line more times than he’s cared to so far today, let alone in his life. “But I think she needs us; now more than ever.”

“No, she doesn’t. She never needed us. She was probably just using us and has spilled all our secrets to Karai by now.” Mikey picks the system back up and restarts the game.

Raph’s eyes narrow at his brother. “I know you don’t believe that.”

“Whatever.” Mikey burrows himself further into the blankets, trying to become one with the darkness he now feels inside himself. “Just leave me alone, bro.”

Raph wants to rage and argue with his brother. He understands Mikeys hurt feelings; it’s not easy to accept that a friend might have betrayed you. Mikey’s so easy going and loving that any betrayal would be hard on him. He’s lucky to have the brothers he has, who will always stick with him and love him no matter what. And now an outsider has thrown him off balance. But Raphael doesn’t have time to explain to Mikey what might be going on here. He’s already wasted too much time and for all he knows you and Karai have already left TCRI. Raph could explain on the way, but he can’t force Mikey to come.

“Fine,” is all Raph growls out before he turns on his heel. At least he’ll have Donnie’s help.

Mikey tries to ignore the pain in his own soul as his brother storms off and goes back to trying to distract himself from the real world.

* * *

 

The time for subtlety and sneaking is past. The turtles know what you’re capable of now. Donnie and Raph quickly make a plan on their way over to the building: Confirm if there is a chip on your neck, see if they can remove it. If it is mind control (Donnie barely manages to stay sane acknowledging this part of the plan), see if they can snap you out of it. They will only give themselves a few minutes to do all of this, because they don’t want to fight you or Karai; not without their brothers back up. And since Leo doesn’t know about his brothers’ actions right now, they have little fudge room.

They force their way in from the roof entrance. It is not a quiet entrance, but the kamikaze of the desperate. Karai has to know they’re coming for you, so it all depends on how many Foot soldiers they’ll have to face between here and you.

The answer to that unspoken question is none. Donnie tracks you down by the motion sensor cameras and they find you a few floors down with Karai. The two turtles bust down some doors and you and Karai whirl around.

Raph’s only confirmation that something is definitely not right anymore is the weapon you’re carrying. It’s not the double broad swords from your last fight, but a spear that towers over you.

_It had been a night when you’d trained for a short while together before just hanging out and discussing your likes and dislikes about martial arts._

_“Obviously, you all know what our favorite weapons are, Tigress,” Mikey said to you between a stringy bite of pizza. One of the few nights you hadn’t moaned about “grease” and “health” and “food variation.” “But you don’t seem to favor any one weapon. Do you have a favorite?”_

_“Really?” You teased, eyes twinkling as you ate your own slice of pizza. “You guys don’t know what my favorite weapon is?”_

_“The staff?” Donnie chimes in first, uncrossing his legs so he can lean forward and grab a new slice. You’re always excited to practice with him, eager to grab any sized staff. But you shake your head in the negative._

_“Your own fists?” Raph asks. Your bones and muscles were hard from the way you trained and many of the forms you showed them were open handed._

_“Nope.” You shake your head again._

_“Swords?” Of course Leo would chime in with this option. While Leo loves his katana, he’s noticed that the only other sword you have is a broad sword, even if it’s only made of wood._

_You cover your face with one hand, minding the pizza in your other. “You’re killing me, Smalls,” you quote. “It’s the guandao!”_

_All the brothers groan. Now that they’d been told, the answer seemed so obvious._

_“Okay, but what weapon do you_ dislike _using most?” You ask them in return._

_They ponder for a minute. They wouldn’t be good practitioners if they didn’t know each other’s weapons if one of them went down in a fight. So far that hasn’t happened, but Splinter has them practice with other weapons regularly._

_“Nunchaku,” Donnie chimes in hesitantly, looking thoughtful. “I like my staff because even with my height, it can give me reach on an opponent. I don’t like something close to my body; I want to keep Foot and Purple Dragons as far away from my tech as I can.”_

_You nod sagely at that answer._

_“Swords,” Raph rumbles, giving his sword wielding brother a leer. Said brother rolls his eyes under his blue mask. “I want to hear the sound of my foe’s breaking bones when I hit them. You can stab someone with a sai, as well as club them, but you can’t really_ hit _someone with a sword.”_

_“Maybe if you don’t do it right,” Leo mutters, but loud enough for you all to hear. Everyone chuckles at that._

_“How do you respond, Leo?” You tease. Maybe he’ll say ‘sai’ just to get a jab in at Raph. The mood is light in the lair tonight, so fighting words aren’t taken seriously right now._

_Leo is silent, chewing on his food as you all wait with baited breath what weapon the leader might say he dislikes. Would he even dislike a weapon?_

_“Throwing stars,” he finally admits, turning away slightly to hide his embarrassment._

_“That’s right!” Mikey finally chimes in. “Leo’s aim is horrible! He can never get them to stick in a target!”_

_Everyone cracks up at that, and when Leo realizes no one is laughing at him per se, but the ridiculous image of disciplined Leo throwing shuriken and having them fall to the floor, he smiles and chuckles lightly with everyone else._

_“What about you, Mikey?” You knock his shoulder with your own._

_“Ya know, I just can’t think of a weapon I really dislike, not to the point of not using it or anything.” With the latent talent and laid back attitude, it’s really no surprise that he can’t come up with an answer._

_“And what about you?” Raph questions. Four pairs of eyes land on you._

_“_ That _one’s easy,” you reply. “The spear. I like staves, but the spear head just adds extra inches that I have to worry about when I spin it. I’m slashing open the ground more than I’d be slashing an opponent. And worrying about which direction the tip is going-cutting or stabbing-is just too much to think about. Just give me a staff and let me knock someone out instead.”_

First a real, sharpened weapon. Now a weapon you hate using. Raph feels without a doubt now that something is wrong, that this is a cry for help. But Donnie-and Leo-will need more convincing.

“You know the plan, Don,” Raph grunts to his brother. Donnie nods, extending his staff while Raph unsheathes his sai, spinning them around. He points at you with his weapon and calls out your name.

“We’ve come for you!”

You still don’t show any reaction on your face, but you lower the spear, body language signaling the start of an attack. Karai swings her arm out in front of you.

“A second attempt, turtles? How pathetic,” she taunts.

“If we wanted to hear from the peanut gallery, we’d ask,” Raph shoots back.

An offended look forms on Karai’s face and she drops her arm.

“Get them,” she orders you. “They will be my next soldiers and my greatest prize,” she hisses.

There is still no emotion on your face, but now that you have Karai’s order, you charge at your friends. Raph moves at the same time, giving Donnie time to assess the situation and find out if you have some kind of tech attached to you like a bad virus. And as long as someone is fighting you, Karai seems content to stay out of the battle once again.

_As long as he stays in close, you can’t do too much with a spear, can you?_ Raph thinks to himself. Nothing too damaging, he hopes. He’ll take on a spear for you. He’ll take on whatever you need him to if you’re really in danger. He’ll take the knocks, but hopefully you won’t cut him up too badly in the short time he gave Donnie to check the tech that might be on you.

“Come on, girlie,” he grunts, getting in close so the spear tip is useless. He blocks the wood with his sai, straining against your maneuvers. “You can’t tell me this is really you. That you’ve given up on us.” He doesn’t mean to put so much emphasis on that last word. By ‘us’ he meant him and his brothers and the friendship you have. But he also can’t get the moments before you were kidnapped out of his head and he’s foolishly letting his emotions leak into a battle. Anything other than rage is useless, he usually thinks. But not anymore. Not when it comes to you.

“Just tell me something. Anything, if you can. If you don’t want us to be here for you, then tell me and I’ll leave. But if we leave, we’ll be enemies from now on.” He is talking way too much for a fight, but he has to try something to get through to you.

“Don’t leave us girlie. I…We love you.” Raph thought about the tactical advantage of maybe saying _he_ loved you. Don’t movies say that love can break through anything? Curses, mental illness, even mind control? But he isn’t ready to face those feelings yet. At least out loud. The turtle instead thinks of how hurt Mikey is, pouting back at the lair. Even Leo, your paqua partner, so quick to dismiss you, shows in his own way that your betrayal hurt him. And he and Donnie are here for you now. Heck, if April could have fought, she’d probably be here with him, too, even though you two don’t know each other that well.

“We’re your friends. We’re here for you.”

But no matter what lovely words he gives you as he fights you off, nothing seems to phase you. Your once large range of expressions is now blank and unchanging. And that just pushes Raph over the edge.

“To hell with this!” He yells. Karai finally perks up, showing an interest in the fight. As a last ditch effort, he uses a move he learned from you, simply side stepping out of your way. _A simple tai chi move._ You weren’t expecting him to yield and lunge forward into nothing. Surprised, your grip loosens on the spear and Raph takes advantage of the situation he’s created and grabs at the spear. Quickly, he twists it around and pins your arms with the narrow wood as he moves behind you.

Raph pushes the hair away from your neck and there’s the confirmation for Donnie and his brothers: a chip attached to your neck, glowing blue like a running computer.

“Donnie!”

“I see it! I see it! You were right, Raph!” The red masked turtle would be delighted to hear those words under normal circumstances and he tries to remind himself that later he should get Donnie to say those words again.

Raph tries to flick the device from your neck, but it’s stuck fast and you wiggle around trying to get out from between the spear and Raph’s hulking frame.

“No, Raph, don’t! You might do some irreversible damage to her!”

“We can’t just leave it!”

Karai yells out, angry that the turtles have discovered the device. She barks out an order and the three of you are suddenly surrounded by Foot soldiers.

“Raph! We’re out!”

“But-”

Donnie just gives him a stern look that communicates, “we found what you wanted in the time you wanted, but-”

“We have to go now!”

Raph looks down at you, still struggling to get out of his grip and at the surrounding Foot ninjas. He can’t leave you now; now that he’s gotten so close, now that he knows what’s wrong-

The conflict that rages inside him explodes before being filled like a vacuum in the span of an instant. All the rage, disappointment, and exhaustion he experienced in the past week are snuffed out like a suffocated candle.

As if in slow motion, Raph releases the spear and it clatters to the floor. You don’t bend down quickly to retrieve it because you don’t feel Raph pressing on your back. In fact, you don’t sense the presence of the turtles at all. They’ve already fled. But the mind control device on your neck is still there and still functioning.

Karai narrows her eyes, exhaling sharply through her nose. Her plan may be falling apart. She looks at you as her soldiers shuffle out of their battle stances.

Maybe it is time to take this plan to the next level. Now.


	11. Kidnapping part 3/Take Back the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys finally get you back

The next couple hours pass by quickly, but they seem too slow to Raph. He hasn’t played the ‘hurry up and wait’ game too often in his life, but he can assure anyone that it’s not fun at all.

The two of them rushed back to the lair as fast as they could and come running in out of breath and talking at the same time. Leo doesn’t have to ask where they went; the disapproval on his face is obvious. But Raphael having a logical second opinion backing him up has Leo actually listening.

Once Donnie and Raph are done explaining what happened moments ago at TCRI, he’s silent for a few moments. Then, he simply nods.

“Alright. We’ll go get her.”

Raph feels some knots unwind inside him. _Finally._

Donnie explains that he thinks he knows how to disable the device with an electro-magnetic pulse.

“But it’s going to take me a couple of hours to put it together.”

And just like that, the knots return to Raph’s stomach. They had already been working against the clock just getting to you that second time. Who knows what could happen in a couple of hours? Will they still be at TCRI?

Mikey is brought into the new plan. He feels terrible for giving up on you, so he and Raph watch the TCRI cameras to watch if you and Karai leave again while Donnie builds an EMP gadget. More like Mikey watches and Raph paces.

Raph has a good reason to fear for your safety at this point. The discovery of the mind control mechanism has Karai scrambling to do something she hadn’t wanted to do to you by force, but she’s desperate to keep you out of the turtles’ hands by any means necessary at this point.

Karai is going to mutate you.

Luckily for you, Karai doesn’t know how to work the machine that creates the purple ooze. She needs Stockman. Being a captive in Tokyo, it’d take at least half a day to fly Stockman back and have him work the machine himself. If the turtles are coming for you, and Karai is certain they are, she doesn’t have that kind of time. And she can’t move you because this is the only Foot lab that has the purple ooze machine. The only option is to mutate you. _Now._ Before the turtles come back. Also lucky for you, Stockman isn’t cooperating.

No threat of violence or rewards makes Stockman cooperate on describing how to work the machine. He may only give a couple of steps before trying to bargain for his return to New York and glory in the Foot Clan once more.

Neither party knows that one is racing against the other.

With an exclamation, Donnie holds up the EMP gadget. Everything moves fast after that. They scramble and grab their weapons, rushing off to the pipes to head back to TCRI.

It’s all a blur to Raph. They enter through the same entrance he and Donnie took only hours before; Karai clearly didn’t even try and fix the door. Who knows what she’s been devoting her time to, since it clearly wasn’t security?

They can only guess, and it has them afraid that they’re already too late.

This time, you’re in the old lab, the top floor. They are very relieved to find you not only un-mutated, but not hooked up to any terrible machines or anything else their imaginations had run wild with. They all gasp or cry out your name.

Karai snarls. The machine is so close to being operational. All she needs is to separate the remaining ooze and somehow get it into your veins.

“Stockman, I am getting sick of waiting, it is either your life or the ooze!” She yells into the webcam. She turns to you. “Take care of them!”

With an order given, like an automaton, you charge. Karai didn’t give you a chance to pick weapons, so you are currently unarmed. The device helps you work that out by spotting two iron bars left over from who can guess what. As you charge at the turtles, bars held up just like your double broadsword form, they hold a defensive line together.

“Not this time!” Raph yells out. “Not anymore. Donnie, now!”

Donnie turns it on, but you still charge at them.

“Donnie!” Raph demands, turning an angry glare on his brother.

“It glitched, give me a minute!”

“A _glitch_? Are you-“ He doesn’t get to finish that sentence as he charges out to stop your spinning weapons. Raph won’t hold back now, even knowing what you’re going through. He won’t hurt you, but he’s going to give his all to defending his brothers.

“Donnie!” He demands again, fending you off. Karai calls in more Foot soldiers to keep his brothers at bay so she can continue arguing with Stockman over video chat to give her the rest of the instructions. All they want to do, though, is protect Donatello while he fiddles with the gadget to get it to work.

“Working on it!”

“Stockman!” They hear Karai’s frustrated yell. He either gives up the instructions or Karai finally deduces it herself, because they can suddenly hear a hissing in the air as the purple ooze is pulled through plastic tubes of the machine and emptied into tiny vials just as Raph manages to push you far away.

“Got it!” Donnie doesn’t hesitate and tries the device again.

The reaction is instantaneous. An EMP burst is designed to shut down electronics within a certain radius of the designed device. Donnie’s machine is small, so all the tech in the lab shuts down. The lights go out, but the lights from the city bleed into the room. The computer Karai was using to talk with Stockman shuts off. And the machine pumping purple ooze stops.

This can’t stop Karai; the vials are already full.

Except.

The device on your neck dims.

The mind control is broken.

Your whole body relaxes and the metal pipes drop to the floor with a loud clang.

The brothers watch you, hardly daring to breath.

Did it work? Did it really work?

Your head lifts and when your eyes land on the four towering turtle brothers, your friends, they finally see the light of recognition in your eyes that Raph had been trying to describe all week. Your face even looks more relaxed than their last encounters with you. You even blink like a normal human should, now that they’re paying attention.

“Oh,” you utter.

Your mouth starts to turn up in a smile before the whole week of being under a terrible mind control device and fighting catches up to you. The migraine erupts fiercer than it did the last time Karai turned the device off for you. Your eyes roll back and you start to fall forward.

Four turtles cry out your name as all you know is the sweet embrace of darkness.

* * *

 

 

_On rare occasions, Raph finds you practicing on the apartment roof. That’s not what’s rare about it, obviously. But sometimes you’d be messing up your forms, putting moves out of order, practicing to music._

_He would do that, too, if he could. But your musical gift was greater than his._

_Your tastes in music differ…only slightly. He leans more towards the harder rock and metal while you’re more mainstream, with some movie soundtracks and well-known classical pieces thrown into the mix. But was that any surprise, considering your musical background?_

_“What do you think you’re doing, girlie? Capoeira?” The turtle taunts._

_You direct a glare to him over your shoulder. It takes only a few sweeping movements and you’re suddenly on top of him. If he’d blinked, he wouldn’t have been sure how you got across the roof so fast. The next thing Raph knows, you’re balanced on one leg, the other raised and tucked so you get more reach up to his neck, where you’re holding a knife hand attack._

_His brothers once said of him that he’s all instinct and no restraint. If that’s true, you’re his perfect counterpart, the yin to his yang; you have great restraint, your fighting ingrained into you, rather than coming from gut feelings._

_“You proved your point, girlie. Now put the weapon down.” Raph looks down at you, keeping a close watch on that flat, knife hand._

_You smirk in victory. You turn your hand over to grab his chin. With your elongated reach from your pose, you pull the turtle down and in close for a victory kiss-_

Raph realizes that his flashback turned into a daydream. With a grunt he comes to, rubbing hard at his face. He’s exhausted. They’re all exhausted, mentally and physically; losing you, fighting you, rescuing you; it was an emotional roller coaster that had lasted way too long.

“You should get some rest,” Leo suggests. He assumes Raph just watches over you as much as he has because he feels guilty about how you got kidnapped in the first place. But Leo has no idea how deep Raph’s guilt really goes. Having you get kidnapped by Karai under his watch is only the surface. The confession and almost kiss just before you’d gotten kidnapped? Wanting to be in a relationship with you? Daydreaming about kissing you while you’re lying here in the hospital? Leo can’t even begin to imagine what Raph is feeling.

Raph just shakes off Leo’s suggestion.

“Come on, bro,” Mikey urges as well. “We can get you something with caffeine. You can nap or something.”

“‘M fi-” he trails off, rubbing his eyes with his palms again. “Okay, maybe a soda.”

Donnie’s closest to the door. He opens it a crack and asks for a drink. A few minutes later, there’s a knock and a chilled soda can is handed through the door and passed along a chain of turtle brothers to Raph.

Raph pops the tab, not worried about the sound waking you. You’ve been out for a couple days; a little pop and hiss couldn’t possibly wake you. But if it did, everyone would be overjoyed to see you awake and back to normal. It’s hard to tell if his flinch is from his dying hope of you waking or from the carbon bubbles he’s swallowing.  

“Come on, Raph. Walk around or nap or something.” Even Donnie gets on his case now. But they’re all worried about their brother’s health as well as yours. “Watching over her like a hawk isn’t going to make her wake up any sooner. As Master Splinter might say, ‘a watched pot never boils.’ Let Mikey watch her for a bit.”

He groans, but acquiesces, heaving his body out of the chair by your bed. He can’t walk outside your room, but he slowly paces around your bed, sipping on his soda as Mikey takes up residence in his vacated seat. The orange clad turtle reaches out and rubs your arm, pursing his lips as he watches over you.

It’s another few hours before you start to stir. When the boys hear the sound of rustling sheets, they all inhale, heads snapping up to watch you. Are you finally waking up? Or are you just moving in your sleep?

No, you are definitely waking up. Who wouldn’t? Your sheets feel like stiff paper, you feel like you’re sleeping naked and where is that fucking alarm clock you need to turn off? Make the damn beeping stop. As you gain consciousness, you are very aware that you have a migraine, if the pain in your head that pulses in your skull when you move and when you hear that annoying beep is any indication.

You finally open your eyes and the brothers all lean close into your vision, exclaiming your name with joy that you’re finally awake. You immediately flinch, pressing your palm into your forehead, before managing to hold up a finger in the ‘wait’ sign. In the brief moment that you had your eyes open, you had taken stock of your surroundings. You were clearly in a hospital room, the annoying beep was a heart monitor attached to your finger and thankfully there are no IVs in your arms.

“I have a migraine. Is it possible to get some medicine and this heart monitor turned off?” You ask quietly, trying not to move.

Donnie again rushes to the door, opens it a crack and relays your requests outside the door. Just like before, in a few minutes, someone comes knocking. A person in light blue scrubs enters, removes the heart monitor from your finger and turns it off, as well as supplying you with a little paper cup of painkillers and a small water. They check some other things about your person before leaving the room as swiftly and quietly as they arrived. You’d already downed the medicine and closed your eyes against the harsh light in your room, so you didn’t notice how they didn’t give a second glance at the turtles or didn’t run screaming from the room at the sight of them. You can’t process that now as all you want to do is help your body get rid of the throbbing pain in your head. One of the turtles is nice enough to flick the lights off after noticing your discomfort.

You doze fitfully, trying to force the pain down and not throw up. Every half hour or so, your body protests that it’s not comfortable, so you try to turn slowly into a new position, but even a snail’s pace couldn’t stop the pain from shooting throughout your whole body as you adjust, causing you to shudder.

The boys watch you anxiously, sitting on pins and needles. Knowing you’re awake now, they just want to ask if you’re okay and find out what happened. But any noise at all could have bad consequences, so they have to remain silent, occasionally watching you spasm in pain and helpless to prevent it.

A couple more hours pass and you feel the pain finally beginning to subside. When the pain finally fades and you feel your thoughts returning to you, you let out a sigh. Opening your eyes again, you register that you’re friends are sitting around you. Leo’s head is lolled forward, his breathing deep; he almost looks like he’s sleeping, but knowing him he could be doing a modified meditation. A look around shows all the turtles with closed eyes and slowly heaving shoulders, so it’s hard to tell who’s really meditating or who’s really asleep.

Except for Raphael. His fingers are laced together as he leans on his hands in front of his face, his golden eyes never leaving you. His eyes look dark and forlorn, but when he sees you sit up and make eye contact with him, his eyes light up like the sun and he inhales sharply. That’s all the sound his brothers needed for their heads to snap up and their eyes to turn to you.

You smile and they all rush for you again, your vision filled to the brim with four hulking turtle friends who sigh your name and laugh with relief, saying how glad they are you’re okay and awake.

“What happened? How did I end up here?” You ask first.

“Do you remember anything?” Leo asks.

Your face scrunches up in thought. “I remember I was with Raph-” you nod in the red masked turtle’s direction “-then there was Bebop and Rocksteady-” you explain slowly. You pause in thought and the turtles wait. You shake your head. “After that, it’s all hazy. Some Japanese woman, maybe?”

Leo fills in the blanks for you; how Raph called yelling unintelligibly at first about how you’d been taken by Karai. How they’d found you at one point and you fought them off like some kind of war machine. Afraid of hurting you, they’d retreated and thought that you’d decided to serve Karai willingly, that maybe she’d offered you an amazing payoff or something worse, so they didn’t really pursue you. Until Donnie and Raph confirmed that something was wrong with you, so they’d tried to rescue you again.

“You were essentially being brainwashed. They’d hooked up some device to the back of your neck that accessed your cerebellum so they could control you. I destroyed it with a little EMP burst machine I came up with,” Donnie finishes.

“And then we brought you here.” Mikey grabs your hand, squeezing like he’ll never let go. “Tigress, we are so sorry. We just left you to Karai. We assumed the worst about you. Can you ever forgive us?”

Leo and Donnie murmur in agreement, except Raph, who just remains as stoic and grumpy as usual. You have a feeling there’s more going with that, but you’ll ask him about it later.

You place your hand on top of Mikey’s. “You came for me eventually right?”

“Yeah! And we promise, from now on, we always will.” The orange masked turtle looks so distraught, as if his well-being from this moment on depends entirely on your decision.

“Of course I forgive you guys.” The boys visible relax, exhaling. “From what I heard, I’d probably doubt me, too. I just have one question.” Your face contorts in confusion. “How are you guys here in the hospital with me?”

Donnie pushes his glasses up his nose. “Funny story, that. We actually have a partnership with the city police department.”

Your eyes widen at that new bit of information. “No way.”

“Mmhm. We asked them to keep an eye out for you when you went missing-”

“Aw, see, you guys did care!”

Donnie glares at your interruption. You’re just like his brothers. Et tu, Brute? “So when we found you, we called up a friend at the station and got you checked out by hand selected doctors and nurses that practice quite a bit of discretion and won’t ask questions.” The ones that treated you were debriefed on who might be visiting you; they were selected as the most open minded and least likely to tattle about them being in there. Signing a non-disclosure agreement was a start, but being threatened by four hulking figures with bulging muscles who practice martial arts isn’t a bad backup plan, either.

You chuckle lowly, impressed, releasing your hand from Mikey’s hold and placing it back on the bed.

After one more night of staying for observation, you get discharged first thing the next day. The boys can’t be with you for this because it’s broad daylight. You found out you were in the hospital for a few days. Your body and mind had been exhausted from the mind control; the doctors just recommended some rest and relaxation. But you’re one that can’t stop moving, even though your body feels like it’s been put through the ringer. You won’t do any extreme work outs, but some stretching, tai chi, and meditation sound heavenly.

You text the boys when you get home and aren’t surprised when you don’t hear anything from them. It’s daytime; they’re probably asleep.

One whole day passes without you hearing from them. It’s not such a big deal. Maybe they just went from sleeping to training and didn’t look at their t-phones.

You text them the next day and another day passes without hearing from them. It still wouldn’t be such a big deal, except you just got out of the hospital more or less because of them.

The third day you text and call again, but no one ever answers. The radio silence continues. Now it’s starting to be a big deal. That evening, you head up to the roof to do your normal practice to get back into the swing of your martial arts classes. And work off your anger at your friends.

“How can they just ignore me like this?” You fume as you work through a form. No one’s around so there’s no harm in talking out loud. “They beg for my forgiveness and then just ignore me?” You turn, kicking out, and suddenly stop. “Oh god,” you suddenly realize, “What if I did something during the mind control? I did something awful to them and now they don’t want to be friends with me anymore.” You slowly straighten, interrupting the form.

It slowly sinks in that without the turtles for your friends, you will be truly alone in New York City. Even after all these months, your martial arts class is so clique-y and you’d given up hope of being included outside of class. You only continued to go because it was the only branch in the city that’s the same as the one you came from in your hometown. If you switched, you’d have to pick up a whole new martial art style. Your job left you inside all day and having the turtles as friends had stopped you from going out anywhere else to meet new people. Why had you needed to go out and meet new people when you had friends now?

“I’m all alone again,” you mutter to yourself. Suddenly, your anger at your heartache builds. “I’m _always_ alone!” You turn, blocking with your left hand and punching with your right, lashing out at the air.

You don’t encounter air.

Your fist hits a hard surface and your eyes snap open, tears leaking out.

“We really need to stop meeting like this, girlie.”

“Raph!” Overwhelmed by your dark thoughts and his sudden appearance, you don’t even stop to think. You rush into his plastron, emotions spilling out as you sob into his shell.

“Whoa, hey!” Raph doesn’t sound surprised. It’s almost as if he heard your whole monologue. He sinks down onto one knee to be more level with you and wraps you in his arms, letting you cry into his shoulder.

“It’s okay, girlie. I got you,” he comforts. “Everything’s alright. Nobody hates you and we’re all still your friends.”

“Then you’re all _jerks_ ,” you wail, pushing him away on that last word, tears still falling from your eyes.

Raph grunts a bit at your shove. “I know. I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to ignore you. We just had to take care of some…family business,” he explains.

You sniffle, wiping at your eyes, but glaring at him even with red, puffy eyes. Raph’s shoulders slump in defeat.

“We were at TCRI, making sure Karai couldn’t replicate that mind control device,” he explains at your glare. “We wanted to make sure Karai could never do that to you or anyone ever again.”

You stop short at that explanation. You tried to remain logical about the whole thing, but you hadn’t expected such a sentimental explanation.

The red masked turtle rubs the back of his neck. “And quite honestly, girlie, chasing after you and fighting you for a week? We were _exhausted_. Down to our bones. I think the night before you left the hospital, we went home and slept for a day and a half. We woke up and the sun was _up_. Even _Donnie_ had a full night’s sleep.”

You absently move away from Raph. His explanation makes sense, but in your mood all you hear is that you’re a burden to them and they don’t want to babysit you any longer.

Raph doesn’t have to read your mind to know where your train of thought is headed. “Hey. You stop that thinking right now.” He gently pulls you closer to him. “We don’t think any less of you for what happened. In fact, we only respect you more. We had no idea you’d been hiding so many skills from us. You could probably give me a run for my money if you put your whole heart into it, eh, girlie?” You let out a small, wet laugh, wiping your eyes.

“You are an incredible, strong, talented girl that we are _honored_ to be friends with.” You’ve never heard Raph be this honest before, but his words are chasing away the darkness that had been growing inside you.

“I-” Something flashes on his face, a mix of worry, embarrassment, and something else. You tilt your head, a silent indication for him to go on.

He growls in frustration, letting go of your arms to stand up and pace. Raph doesn’t think he’s good at communicating his feelings, but growing up with his brothers, Splinter taught him that nobody can read his mind and if he wants to be understood, he has to at least try to explain what he’s thinking. “Look, I’ll admit it; I was-“ he hesitates “-I was avoiding you, a bit.”

Your head jerks back in surprise, hurt and confusion written plainly on your face.

“I was afraid. You got kidnapped _right in front of me_. _On my watch._ Right before we-” He immediately cuts himself off, still not wanting to acknowledge the event. “I thought you’d blame me and…and hate me.”

Your gaze softens and this time you stop him from pacing, placing your own hands on his arms.

“Raph, I’ve accepted the risks of being friends with you guys. Hell, it’s a risk just being a _girl_ in this city. When you first found me, I was being attacked by a _gang member_. I started thinking you guys didn’t want to be slowed down by me anymore. Or you’d think I was too much of a risk to keep as a friend. And that you guys would try to “protect” me by leaving me.” You don’t hesitate to lean into his plastron a second time tonight. He doesn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around you. He’s so much bigger than you that being enveloped in his arms feels warm and safe.  

Your name falls from Raph’s lips like a prayer. “I’m so sorry we made you feel that way. I promise to never let any of this happen again.”

A few moments of silence pass, the two of you pressed close together, chests rising and falling in slow, rhythmic breathing.

“Well,” you squeak out. “I’m kind of hoping something happens again.” You look up at Raph and there’s a dusting of pink on your cheeks from your boldness and your idea.

The turtle’s face scrunches up in confusion. When he recognizes the blush and processes what you’re getting at, his gold eyes widen in awe.

“You sure?” he asks.

You simply nod, trying not to break eye contact so neither of you can back down.

Nervous, Raph slowly leans down and your eyes slide close as you stand on tiptoes to meet him halfway. His lips are surprisingly soft and warm and while no fireworks go off in your mind, you can’t help but smile into the kiss, causing the turtle to smile as well. You reach up to wrap your arms around his neck to extend the kiss and he eagerly wraps his arms around your waist, squeezing you tight.

You two part, but you press your foreheads together and neither of you can stop grinning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so so so sorry this update has been so long in coming. Work became super stressful and time consuming and sucked out all my creativity for this. That and falling into a new fandom really hasn't helped. But don't give up on me! I still have a few cute, little drabble-y one shot chapter ideas after this plot. So please stay tuned in and subscribed!


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